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Google will retire the YouTube Gaming app in March 2019
- The YouTube Gaming standalone app will be discontinued in March next year.
- Google says that the features of the YouTube Gaming app will be brought over to the main YouTube site and app.
- The retirement of the YouTube Gaming app is likely a move by Google to better compete with rival services like Amazon-owned Twitch.
In a blog post published today, Google outlined the history and popularity of the YouTube Gaming app — a standalone service that connects viewers with video game-related content on YouTube.
However, after discussing how popular and integral the service is, Google also announced that it is going to retire the standalone YouTube Gaming app in March of 2019. Google will merge the features of YouTube Gaming with the main YouTube site and app.
This is an interesting turn of events, considering that the beginnings of the YouTube Gaming app stemmed from the popularity of gaming videos on the main YouTube site. Google saw this trend (as well as the rise of other video streaming sites like Twitch) and created an app just to service the gaming community.
Now, after building up the popularity of that standalone service, Google is moving everything back to vanilla YouTube. It’s certainly an interesting move.
Google explains this move as an attempt to make gaming content more accessible to all YouTube visitors, which makes sense. With gaming, in general, getting more and more popular amongst all age groups, there are plenty of “casual” gamers who wouldn’t think to download a YouTube Gaming app but would go to the regular YouTube site to find gaming-related content.
The new hub for YouTube gaming content will be at youtube.com/gaming. You can visit the site now to see what it looks like.
Google will cater the suggested videos to you based on what it thinks you want to see, just like with regular YouTube videos, so the more you watch the better its suggestions will become.
What do you think? Do you use the YouTube Gaming app regularly and will be sad to see it go, or will it be more convenient to have everything in one place? Let us know int he comments!