YouTube Gaming Launches Today – Update 2

YouTube Gaming, the competitor of Twitch.tv, goes online today. At the same time, the streaming platform will get apps for Android and iOS, but for now only in Great Britain and the US. On YouTube Gaming, users will soon be able to rewind up to four hours in a stream.

The opening of YouTube Gaming follows almost exactly one year after the news that online store giant Amazon acquired the popular streaming platform Twitch. YouTube Gaming will make full use of HTML5 for its video streams, while Twitch currently runs parts of its video elements in Flash. YouTube Gaming will also have support for 60fps streams and a stream can be converted directly to a YouTube video.

Users are still seeing a ‘coming soon’ screen on gaming.youtube.com, but the service should go online sometime later today. With YouTube gaming, more than 25,000 games must have their own page. It is not known when the app can be downloaded in the Benelux.

Update, 19.20: gaming.youtube.com is now up and running.

Update 2, Saturday, 14:58: This piece stated that YouTube Gaming in its entirety will only launch in the US and UK for now. However, that is not correct; the app is only available in the US and UK for now, and the site is available in all countries where YouTube is accessible. Users regularly report getting 404 errors on the site, but it is not entirely clear why. Sorry for the inconvenience.