Google's YouTube Gaming Site Ready For Debut

Google is adding a new channel to YouTube with a Gaming homepage, featuring a live experience that makes it simpler to broadcast gameplay to the company's popular video website.

Although the site is scheduled to go live Wednesday, Aug. 26, in the US and the UK, a visit to the site currently brings users to a "Coming Soon" landing page and the ability to get an email notification for site updates.

The BBC reported the site will go live at 6 p.m. GMT (2 p.m. EDT).

Once live, the YouTube gaming site will offer users content spanning games from Asteroids to Zelda, with more than 25,000 games getting their own page. It is also providing a single place for all related videos and live streams about individual titles.

On top of existing features like high frame-rate streaming at 60 frames per second (fps), DVR, and the automatic conversion of streams into a YouTube video, Google is redesigning they system so that users no longer need to schedule a live event ahead of time, and creating a single link users can share for all their streams.

"We wanted to create a one-stop shop for all gaming content," Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's head of gaming, said in an interview with the BBC. "At the moment there is a fragmented experience. People go to different places for live content, and YouTube for video on demand. We have amazing gamers that don't live stream yet. Now they have that opportunity."

:story: InformationWeek