Close to eight months after the official launch, Google has finally brought the Youtube Gaming Android and iOS apps to India, Philippines along with other countries. You can start downloading the apps right away. While the web version has been available since June, the apps though, were limited to US and the UK.
Launched last year as a competitor to Twitch, the roll out was fairly limited with the apps, officially unavailable in India. That has changed now, and both the official apps can be downloaded from the respective app stores for Android and iOS.
YouTube claims that its game streaming platform offers a faster and seamless gaming experience. The interface of the platform shows the users a list of featured channels and popular channels.
Gamers can also find the list of trending games through the Games tab and can even browse by channels through the Channels tab. Through the Games Tab, users can look for upcoming events and competitions taking place for a particular game.
YouTube Gaming obviously borrows some of the features from general YouTube video channel layout. Already some of the channel’s of YouTube have now made home in YouTube Gaming channel section. Compared to its rival, Twitch, YouTube Gaming as of now offers no unique features, but it definitely gives a satisfying live streaming experience, and also provides for the ability to pause a live stream.
Gamers eager to go online can find the NBA 2K15, Metal Gear Solid V, and Until Dawn among other expected series in the platform. Other games that can drive traffic into YouTube Gaming are the always popular Counter Strike series, along with DOTA.
Competing against twitch though, will be an uphill task. Ever since its launch last year, there hasn’t been much hype or excitement in the gaming community, w.r.t Youtube Gaming. The Android app for example, has just over 500K downloads, as compared to the 2 Million plus downloads which Twitch has. Moreover, with continued competition from Facebook in the overall video domain, Google’s video streaming service is virtually fighting an open-at-all-fronts war.
Twitch on the other hand, has become an archetype for the live game streaming across the globe and its user-base is loyal. YouTube has to do more than just getting inspired from Twitch and bring in ground-breaking features that propel the gamers to choose its platform over Twitch.
