Earlier this year, there was a large amount of buzz surrounding Twitch and game streaming, as Google looked all but set to acquire the popular gaming service. In the end, the deal with Google fell through, and Amazon – of all people – managed to snag Twitch for around $900 Million or so. As Google often does however, they simply launched their own offering into the market with YouTube Gaming. As YouTube launched the new service during E3 earlier this year, it was a clear move to take an established market by storm. The service is still in its infancy right now, but with the amount of eyeballs and infrastructure that YouTube has it’ll quickly grow into a big deal for the game industry.
Now however, a preview version of the Android app is available as a Creator Preview. As of right now, those interested can download the APK online, but it’s also said to be populating in the Play Store. I’m unable to see it right now, but according to 9to5Google, the app description lists an app that people can watch live streams as well as pre-recorded videos on all manner of games. Put simply, “it’s all on YouTube gaming” according to the changelog, but there doesn’t appear to be a way to stream Android games to YouTube at least not just yet. This is more than likely coming in a future update however, as gaming on Android – thanks to the likes of the SHIELD and better hardware – is becoming a big deal for a lot of people.
If anything, YouTube Gaming appears to be a service built for gamers, not just streamers as Twitch can often feel like. There are pages for dedicated games, allowing fans to find content only related to their favorite games or styles of games and of course you can watch it all back in glorious HD. If, like us, you spend too much time on your smartphone or tablet watching gaming streams, finding those on YouTube just got a whole lot better and Twitch might have one more thing to worry about.