A New Era For Twitch?

By Adam Stewart
9 years Ago

This spring sees Twitch move into new territory, as the Amazon-owned game streaming site begins to sell games through its online platform&period; What will this move mean for the company, and how is it likely to affect the evolving game space&quest;&NewLine;New Horizons&NewLine;<figure id="attachment&lowbar;123767" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-123767" style="width&colon; 960px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-123767" src="https&colon;//cdn&period;bagogames&period;com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/06100152/Nemesis-new-horizons-bagogames&period;jpg" alt="&quot&semi;Twitch [fmj] - nemesis&quot&semi; (CC BY 2&period;0) by Crypticommonicon" width="960" height="601" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-123767" class="wp-caption-text">&&num;8220&semi;Twitch [fmj] &&num;8211&semi; nemesis&&num;8221&semi; (CC BY 2&period;0) by Crypticommonicon</figcaption></figure>Where Valve and Steam have ventured, Twitch now dares to tread&period; On February 27th this year, Twitch announced that it was to commence selling video games as well as streaming them&period; This is a bold move, but according to figures provided on the company website, Twitch currently sports a healthy viewer base of around 9&period;7 million daily hits from all over the world&period; This makes for over 2 million individual streamers each month and a vibrant community of some <a href="http&colon;//www&period;twitch&period;tv/p/partnerfaq">17,000 Partnered</a> Program members, so there’s certainly room for this strategy to reap generous rewards&period;&NewLine;<iframe class="giphy-embed" src="//giphy&period;com/embed/LYkdfTMXqooj6" width="480" height="270" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>&NewLine;<a href="https&colon;//giphy&period;com/gifs/world-of-warcraft-LYkdfTMXqooj6">via GIPHY</a>&NewLine;The venture makes good commercial sense in light of the sheer variety of games being streamed on the site these days&period; Almost all conceivable video game genres are represented&period; High-tech team-based shoot-em-ups like <a href="https&colon;//www&period;callofduty&period;com/">Call of Duty </a>and sci-fi extravaganza Destiny rub shoulders with fantasy RPGs like World of Warcraft&period; &NewLine;With that many regular viewers, and that many regular streamers covering such a broad spectrum of games, it would seem a little churlish for Twitch to sit on the sidelines of its own party rather than join in with the fun&period;&NewLine;A Short History of Twitch&NewLine;It’s worth bearing in mind that Twitch has only been Twitch for six years or so&period; It originally came about as a spin-off project for Justin&period;tv, a general-content media streaming platform founded in 2007 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear&period; They soon realized that they would need a separate channel set up specifically to handle gaming content and then it became readily apparent that there was more gaming media out there than a mere channel could accommodate&period; Thus, on June 6th 2011, Twitch&period;tv entered public beta as a standalone game-streaming site&period; The parent company rebranded to Twitch Interactive in February 2014, at about the same time the famous Twitch Plays Pokémon stream went viral&period;&NewLine;<iframe src="https&colon;//www&period;youtube&period;com/embed/aG2Dc2bp4oU" width="854" height="480" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>&NewLine;This event, billed as a spontaneous crowd-sourcing experiment, attracted over 36 million views&period; The Justin&period;tv site faded from the Internet two months later, with public and press attention focused firmly now upon Twitch and the excitement it was generating&period;&NewLine;Following interest from Google, Twitch was acquired by Amazon two months after the Pokémon experiment proved beyond the shadow of doubt that game streaming had a promising commercial future&period;&NewLine;The Amazon Connection&NewLine;In many respects, this move shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s kept a passing eye on the activities of parent company Amazon&period; Amazon is one of the five top tech companies which are collectively known on the stock market as FAMGA (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon)&period; Between them, these modern-day titans of industry make up a whopping 38&period;9&percnt; of the total market cap of the NASDAQ 100 as of last year&period;&NewLine;As such, Amazon is caught in lockstep with the others, as the various different media platforms and sectors merge and coalesce&period; In the field of streaming film and TV media content, Amazon has reached an uneasy impasse against the market reach of Netflix &&num;8211&semi; it has as much of that market as it is likely to get, and when the wriggle room gets tight, it can sometimes be smart to move sideways&period; Using the Twitch&period;tv platform to retail video games is by far the easiest way into a new market for the company&period; Half the tech architecture is in place already, which makes the process of entering the gaming market tidier and considerably less costly than setting everything up from scratch&period;&NewLine;How the Service Works&NewLine;Some 50 game titles have been lined up for the platform so far, from developers including Ubisoft, Telltale Games (the folks behind the <a href="https&colon;//bagogames&period;com/walking-dead-new-frontier-ties-bind-parts-1-2-review/">Walking Dead</a> game series) and Digital Extremes&period; Popular games available for download include <a href="https&colon;//bagogames&period;com/psychonauts-universe-will-arrive-psvr-february/">Psychonauts </a>and For Honor&period; In-game content is also featured, and Twitch Crate rewards dispensed to any game purchase that costs &dollar;4&period;99 or more&period; Games are downloaded and played through the Twitch launcher, which previously has seen use to assist Twitch Prime customers in redeeming their games and loot codes&period; Additional download options are catered for too, so gamers can elect to download and play the games through existing developers/publishers, including Uplay&period;&NewLine;Developers earn a 70&percnt; share of the revenue, and Twitch-affiliate partner streams are encouraged to earn a 5&percnt; commission rate through promoting game sales by way of their channel pages&period; The overall aim of this exercise is to incentivize Twitch streamers into becoming a marketing force for Twitch the game retailer&period; Given how effective social media marketing is proving to be, it will probably work like a dream, and serve to broaden choice in a download marketplace currently occupied by two heavy hitters&colon; Valve and Steam&period;&NewLine;The Twist in the Tail&NewLine;A three-way battle looks likely to ensue, but Twitch comes with built-in advantages that are sure to come in handy, and a customer metric that is both content generator and content distributor, sharer and buyer&period;&NewLine;<figure id="attachment&lowbar;123768" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-123768" style="width&colon; 960px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-123768" src="https&colon;//cdn&period;bagogames&period;com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/06100340/OUROBOROS-NECKLACE-Bagogames&period;jpg" alt=" OUROBOROS NECKLACE (CC BY-ND 2&period;0) by Rudianos" width="960" height="720" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-123768" class="wp-caption-text">OUROBOROS NECKLACE (CC BY-ND 2&period;0) by Rudianos</figcaption></figure>&NewLine;In the shade of the new overlap between these merging forms, Amazon/Twitch have spotted what they think to be a marketable space akin to that hitherto occupied by Facebook&semi; a social media platform built around gaming, where the gamers themselves provide the key elements of market and marketers&period; If what Amazon have struck upon here is indeed the <a href="http&colon;//www&period;tokenrock&period;com/explain-ouroboros-70&period;html">Ouroboros</a> serpent it so appears to be, then the tail is liable to be twitching comfortably for quite some time…&NewLine;

Categories: Opinion
Tags: Streaming Telltale Games Top Stories Twitch Ubisoft

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