YouTube Gaming prepares to take on Twitch

YouTube is launching a new website dedicated to livestreamed and on-demand gaming content called—brace yourselves—YouTube Gaming.

YouTube is launching a new website dedicated to livestreamed and on-demand gaming content called—brace yourselves—YouTube Gaming. The site will have dedicated pages for more than 25,000 games, "from Asteroids to Zelda," as well as channels featuring content created by both game publishers and the YouTube community.

As livestreams will be "front and center" on the new site, YouTube plans to launch "an improved live experience that makes it simpler to broadcast your gameplay to YouTube," Product Manager Alan Joyce wrote in a. "On top of existing features like high frame rate streaming at 60fps, DVR, and automatically converting your stream into a YouTube video, we’re redesigning our system so that you no longer need to schedule a live event ahead of time. We’re also creating [a] single link you can share for all your streams."

YouTube Gaming users will be able to add games on the site to their virtual collection, and channel subscriptions will provide notifications whenever a new livestream begins. "And when you want something specific, you can search with confidence, knowing that typing 'call' will show you 'Call of Duty' and not 'Call Me Maybe'," Joyce added.

YouTube Gaming was initially hinted at back in March, when an anonymous source said the company was preparing to relaunch YouTube Live following its failure to acquireTwitch, which eventually ended up in the hands of Amazon, in 2014. It's expected to go live sometime this summer, and until it does you can sign up to be notified of future happenings at Gaming.YouTube.com. I would also recommend you take a moment to enjoy this tweet from Twitch, welcoming YouTube Gaming to the scene. Burn.