‘YouTube Gaming can catch up with Twitch’

YouTube’s new Gaming portal is a genuine threat to Twitch, warn prominent video journalists.

Although YouTube comfortably leads the market with video-on-demand content, Twitch has become the platform of choice for live-streaming. Something YouTube hopes to change.

YouTube is late to the party, but I’d never discount it as it has that established user base,” said Mike Channell, presenter and co-founder of YouTube channel Outside Xbox. There are more people watching gaming content on YouTube than there are on Twitch. It has a potential audience of literally millions and as long as they can access that audience they aren’t in any trouble.”

Videogamer’s head of video production Simon Miller added: If any service out there can make up the gap, it would be YouTube. It’s something YouTube is going to have to be very dedicated to doing.”

But Twitch has brushed off the threat.

Competition is good for any industry and it validates what we already know, which is gaming video is a huge market that others want a piece of,” said PR director Chase.