With over 100 million visitors per month, there wasn’t really any competition for Twitch to contend with. Well, until now! Not one to sit on the sidelines, Google announced YouTube Gaming a few months ago and it finally went live last week in countries where YouTube is available. Instead of searching for those videos with the help of several keywords on YouTube, YouTube Gaming helps you find precisely what you’re looking from its library of gaming-related content in addition to letting you discover new games and channels that you can subscribe to. Perhaps it made sense for YouTube to index and categorize the content on its site rather than buyout Twitch!
The site welcomes you with a nice black background which would appeal to all those night-gamers who can’t stand the bright light that emanates from their screen. On the left, you’ll find the list of games with available content and on the right, channels that you can subscribe to. The section in the middle is for content that is divided into 4 categories – Live Streaming content, Spotlight, Recommended and Popular. Videos across the site will have one of these 4 icons to identify what content you’re viewing as you come across the thumbnails. Overall, the site has a very familiar feel and is quite intuitive. While YouTube Gaming is available on the web, you can also access it via the app versions available on Google Play or the Apple Store, but for some reason is currently available only to users in the US and UK. Unless you’re an Android user, in which case, here’s how you can get the YouTube Gaming app right away! (Tough luck iPhone peeps!)
Click on Settings to proceed. If this screen does not appear, go to Menu > Settings > Security > and check “Unknown Sources” to allow your phone to install apps from sources other than the Google Play Store. If this option was already enabled, click on YES when prompted to install and the app will install onto your phone. As simple as that.
