YouTube Gaming launches Aug. 26 with website and mobile apps

Google will launch YouTube Gaming, the streaming video site's gaming-focused service, Aug. 26 on the web and in dedicated Android and iOS apps, Google announced today.

YouTube Gaming, which YouTube and parent company Google announced in June, is meant to be a one-stop shop for people looking for gaming video content. The service automatically collects all gaming-related videos as well as livestreams on individual pages for more than 25,000 different games. It will also provide users with personalized recommendations based on the pages and channels they follow.

In addition, Google wants to make it easier for people to livestream games on YouTube. A new page at youtube.com/stream, which is currently in beta, provides a streamlined process to start streaming at a personal URL.

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YouTube launching its own dedicated gaming app and website, YouTube Gaming

"Together, we all make gaming better," said Frank Petterson, engineering manager for YouTube Gaming, in a prepared statement. "Our peers make us better gamers, and games are made better by the communities that surround them."

YouTube Gaming is Google's effort to focus more on gamers and gaming video, with the company's main competitor, Amazon-owned Twitch, being the leader in livestreaming gaming content. Amazon announced exactly one year ago that it was buying Twitch, following initial reports saying that Google was interested in acquiring Twitch; it was later reported that Google backed down over the potential antitrust concerns that the deal would have raised.

This past weekend, Twitch hit a new milestone with 2 million concurrent viewers, the company said in a statement to Polygon today. The record came from the combined viewership of ESL One Cologne 2015 and the North American finals for the 2015 League of Legends Championship Series.

"The opportunity in gaming video is enormous, and others have clearly taken notice," said Matthew DiPietro, senior vice president of marketing for Twitch. "We are dedicated to being the best social, global, multi-screen video platform for gamers, period." DiPietro added that Twitch will reveal more about its future plans at the inaugural TwitchCon in September.

YouTube Gaming will launch initially on an English-language website. The Android and iOS apps for YouTube Gaming will roll out tomorrow in the U.K. and U.S., with other countries "coming soon," according to Google.

For more, check out Polygon's own YouTube channel, where we run livestreams multiple times per week.