Twitch is a very famous streaming platform. Founded in 2011, It holds a huge audience, and its premium subscription includes really cool bonuses for online games.
Streaming – whether it is gaming, or personal blogs, or quick, direct inclusion of the media – has long been not a new entertainment for young people and not just a fashionable function from social networks. This is a significant share of mass culture and our life.
For the popularization of user live broadcasts, you need to thank social networks and instant messengers, which almost simultaneously picked up the trend, and now an insane number of people from different parts of the world go on air every day for various reasons. From any outback – if only there were mobile Internet or Wi-Fi.
What is generally streamed on Twitch?
Twitch is used to stream eSports tournaments, gaming-related shows, and even walkthroughs of various games. Rarely we come across other content such as fashion, economics, etc. Compared to YouTube, it is pretty much limited (we will talk about the comparison in the following sections), but some streamers actually decided to introduce gambling-related content. It is not a surprise, because, on YouTube, channels that show how people stream gambling videos are pleasurable to watch. They play slots online for real money, poker and people often open loot boxes. Such streamers garner attention from people. It is very interesting to watch someone playing and feel emotions, especially when it comes to casinos. But only a few people follow this tendency on Twitch and for the most part, they stream only PC games.
Comparison with YouTube
Talking about Twitch, we cannot escape comparison with YouTube. There is really no big difference in picture quality between Twitch and YouTube Gaming. The fact is that YouTube Gaming already at the start allowed broadcasting video in 1080p at 60 FPS – this is a very serious gap, especially in terms of frame rate.
While Twitch was screwing up support, it can be said, of the vital 1080p @60FPS format, Google managed to turn on HDR technology (which is important when the streamer plays, for example, on the PS4 Pro) and even implemented 360-degree panoramic broadcasts. Yes, it’s not just a player that plays a movie previously uploaded to the site, but direct connections from a camera that shoots a spherical panorama. And these streams can be watched with virtual reality glasses. Imagine how cool an online show you can do.
YouTube is far ahead in terms of technology, but why is it? Does Twitch really care about catching up with a competitor, fastening 8K resolution and panoramas? That’s right – none of this Twitch is needed. This is a platform that specializes in games, and for the most part, it is a screen capture, and now 1080p resolution for watching games is quite enough. Moreover, the lion’s share of the audience prefers to watch streams from laptops and smartphones.
There are more hardcore game streamers on Twitch that make deep content, rather than tweak at the camera. At the same time, unlike the screaming ones in the intention to entice themselves to the virality of YouTube, their streams are much more popular, because they, as a rule, are well versed only in a certain genre, or even in one specific game. That is – in one niche. And Twitch itself, as a primordial gaming platform, aggregates a more interested audience in games.
Both applications support 1080p streaming at 60 frames per second and, We must say, even on the relatively small screen of the iPhone 6S, the difference is clearly visible – both in resolution and FPS. The 3G Internet does not draw out the quality of 1080 @60, only 1080 @30, but on LTE there are no long downloads or friezes. This is important, considering how many people are watching the broadcasts virtually on the go – in transport, in the queue and just away from the PC and TV.
Conclusion
Returning to the title of the article Twitch is famous streaming games on its platform. This is the most popular activity right now, and temporarily we can see no replacement for that. It still remains the king of streaming.
