In the face of Twitch’s continued success, YouTube are reportedly set to buy the livestreaming service for $1 billion.
No matter how much you, I, or YouTube deny it, the video landscape is changing. For gamers in particular, there are several avenues down which we can travel down in order to see glorious gaming footage play out right before our eyeballs. Many of us will head to YouTube to watch trailers in full 1080p HD, but when we want to see the games we love (or are interested in) in action, minus the post-editing sheen or without the constant commentary of a Let’s Play video, then we head to Twitch, where anything goes as long as its live. Indeed, Twitch has brought us many a gaming nugget, from game announcements, to hour long streams of unreleased titles to new gaming experiences in themselves, such as Twitch Plays Pokémon and now, YouTube are reportedly set to buy the livestreaming service for $1 billion.
While it’s easy to explain the decision as ‘Twitch is successful, YouTube wants in on that’, the reason may be more complex. While YouTube is owned by Google and it does allow for YouTube livestreams as well as Google Hangouts, Twitch is still a significant piece of the video viewing pie that YouTube likely can’t ignore any longer. But the company hasn’t just had to convince Twitch’s founders that they will continue to improve the service for gamers (rather than turning it into a corporate cash cow that has lost sight of its core audience) as YouTube has also had to fend off competition from Microsoft and several venture capitalists who have all put their names in the hat as potential buyers.
However, despite YouTube being considered as “the best” buyout option for the company by the team behind Twitch, they are also said to be looking at investment funding as opposed to a total sale of the company. Not only this but sources explain that the “deal isn’t imminent” suggesting that despite being the frontrunners in the buyout options, YouTube’s purchase of Twitch is still a long way from final.
We’ll keep you posted once we know more.
Source: Polygon
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