YouTube Gaming and App Coming Soon

YouTube is launching a dedicated site and app for gaming in it's latest attempt to take on Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch.

Google - owners of YouTube - is said to have made a bid for Twitch last year, only to be beaten to it by Amazon's $970m (£620m) offer.

The search giant said the service would launch later this summer.

YouTube Gaming product manager Alan Joyce said: "On YouTube, gaming has spawned entirely new genres of videos, from let's-plays, walk-through, and speed-runs to cooking and music videos. Now, it's our turn to return the favour with something built just for gamers."

The Let's Play trend has proven particularly popular. Channels that demonstrate how to build environments in "sandbox" game Minecraft command views into the hundreds of millions.

Call of Duty

Mr Joyce said YouTube Gaming would provide an area on YouTube fenced off from the rest, so that "typing 'call' will show you [video game] 'Call of Duty' and not [pop song] 'Call Me Maybe'."

Advertising revenue is shared between the broadcaster and YouTube. YouTube, like Twitch also allows for a "tip jar" function for viewers to send money to the broadcaster.

YouTube Gaming will consist of 25,000 individual game portals which bring together all the activity around each title on a single page.

 

Google has hopes the new services will lure gamers away from rival Twitch which currently dominates the market for live online broadcasting. Around 12 billion hours of live gaming are watched on the site every month.

Another competitor, Steam Broadcasting, caters to PC gamers but is less popular.

YouTube Gaming's launch will initially just be in the US and UK.