Twitch fires back at YouTube: video uploads incoming
After Google failed to acquire the streaming service Twitch it began to implement, update and release streaming features on the company's own YouTube video platform.
While YouTube is not there yet when it comes to streaming offers, the move while not completely unexpected should have raised concern at Twitch headquarters considering that Google runs some of the most popular Internet services and rarely fails to miss options to cross-promote its services.
Twitch held the official first TwitchCon yesterday and today in San Francisco and announced a list of massive changes coming to the platform in 2016.
Among them several features that puts Twitch in direct competition with YouTube in areas where YouTube is doing very well. This includes support for video uploads on Twitch which is without doubt the biggest of the announcements of the event's keynote.
What this means is that Twitch users can upload prerecorded videos to Twitch similarly to how videos are uploaded on YouTube currently.
This puts Twitch in direct competition with YouTube and while Twitch's content is limited to gaming, it is very likely that many content creators will upload their videos to Twitch and not only to YouTube once the feature becomes available.
While Google is busy adding streaming features to YouTube to compete with Twitch, Twitch is adding video upload and management features to its service to compete with YouTube on that level as well.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves over time. Will gamers move completely to Twitch or YouTube, or will they upload videos and do broadcasts on both services?
Other features of interest are options for broadcasters to create video playlists, a fully revamped conversations module and the ditching of Adobe Flash in favor of HTML5 video which will happen in 2016 on the platform.
You can watch a recording of the keynote by following this link.
Now You: What's your take on this? Does Twitch stand a chance against Google and YouTube when it comes to pre-recorded videos?
I watched TI5 exclusively on the YouTube stream, it was of much higher quality than the Steam web feed and far superior to Twitch.
“and while Twitch’s content is limited to gaming”
Limited? As in, stated their Terms of Service?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the meaning of “while” in this context.
Could mean “although”, OTOH could mean “currently, and as long as audience interest is limited to just gaming…”
This comment (above) suggests that the ‘limitation’ implied in the article is not due to Twitch policy/TOS:
“you can do basically whatever you want (within reason) on it and not hurt your channel’s rights”
TBH, there are many things that YouTube offers that Twitch will probably never do. One main item is the convenience of changing what your broadcast is, per broadcast. I use Xsplit and I tried out Youtube’s streaming and I do like that I can change everything right before I broadcast, so I am no longer Game A or Event B, I can change the title from my Xsplit program, rather than having to login and HOPE it changes on the site. There have been dozen of times I’ve changed it on Twitch, only to find out that it never took.
I also hope that Twitch gets better servers for streaming, waiting til Q2 2016 is a long time for HTML5 player tho.
But will gamers switch to Twitch? Possibly not
One big problem with Twitch is that they delete videos after x amount of days (30 for free and 60 for Turbo) for streams; YouTube doesn’t and in-fact, they make the video private on your account so you can choose whether or not you want to keep it before others can see it.
To say that Twitch is in direct competition is a bit of a stretch. Especially since there is no mention of extending how long a broadcast/video will remain on Twtich, even the uploaded ones. There is even another problem: 20GB file size limit. So a 2 hour session may not be something you could upload to Twitch.
While these are great and especially the continuous playlist playing while you’re not streaming, it’s still beginning of 2016. That gives YouTube time to tweak and adjust things and to figure out how to promote things better.
As it stands, if YouTube could convince 20% of Twitch gamers to stream via YouTube only, I would dare say, by the time 2016 rolls around, Twitch could be hurting big.
Twitch’s only major plus side, is that since it’s streaming content, you can do basically whatever you want (within reason) on it and not hurt your channel’s rights, such as copyright take down notices.
I don’t like having to use a 3rd party encoding tool. For Twitch I can encode right from my video card. IF YTG is going to get going on the right foot, it needs to incorporate that ability.
I’m assuming you mean with software like nVidia’s ShadowPlay or AMD’s Raptr, which are 3rd party since Twitch doesn’t provide any software to stream with, nor do many games (2nd party).
YouTube Streaming service does have the ability to have the streaming done via other software, even giving you an RTMP address that you can plug in with key.
However, take note that all encoding software streaming to Twitch or YouTube is 3rd party. It’s not provided by either service.
Looking forward to the moment they finally kick the Flash elements of their player to the curb.
Meanwhile, this seems amusing given that Twitch made a point to emphasize they wouldn’t be storing old recordings of streams indefinitely but now seem content to do the opposite of that now that YouTube Gaming is still stumbling across the stage in its infancy (which is still absolutely nowhere near the level Twitch is at in terms of usage but again, it’s early going).
I wish them best of luck. The keynote was awesome and I had the feeling that the guys really love what they are doing. I miss that since you mostly get business-type keynotes usually that lack passion.