Back in June, YouTube Gaming was launched in the attempt to compete with Amazon-owned Twitch and today a further step has been taken in that direction, as they just announced live streaming capabilities to YouTube will soon be available on Android phones. Along with live streaming, a Japanese version of the YouTube Gaming app will be launched, although no specific date has been set yet.
During the announcement made on the first day of Tokyo Game Show, Ryan Wyatt, YouTube’s global gaming head said “Japan’s mobile games define its gaming culture, far more so than in other countries.(…)This trend shows there’s a real need for gamers to easily share what’s on their screen with the gaming community, as it happens.”
While we couldn’t agree more on that, YouTube Gaming will have to compete against Twitch, which already has a massive and very loyal community. Convincing Twitch influencers who already have a solid number of followers to move onto the new platform won’t be an easy task, but it’s perhaps the most important thing YouTube Gaming needs to achieve in order to succeed.
Japan is the first country in Asia to get YouTube Gaming, and it was already launched last month in the US and the UK. The service does have potential as Twitch doesn’t support mobile gaming yet, and YouTube didn’t randomly choose Japan as the first Asian country to launch their new app in. Gaming is undeniably a huge part of the Japanese modern culture and Twitch is not popular there either.
If YouTube Gaming will continue to focus on untapped markets and offer features like rewinding and 60fps streaming it may very well gain the attention of mobile gamers.
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