YouTube is reportedly exploring new avenues to expand its offerings and tap into the game-streaming market while simultaneously boosting advertising revenue.
The company is said to be testing Playables, a game streaming platform for YouTube, as revealed in an email obtained by The Wall Street Journal. This platform aims to bring online video games to YouTube’s extensive user base, presenting an intriguing development that bears a resemblance to Stadia.
With Playables, users will have the opportunity to directly play games on their devices. The email highlights one of the games, Stack Bounce, which is an arcade-style game, but there aren’t many other details.
Playables will allow instant access to these games either through the YouTube website or the mobile app, available on iOS and Android platforms. This venture positions YouTube to potentially establish a strong presence in the gaming community and further diversify its offerings.
Although YouTube has already dabbled in gaming, this new venture appears to be motivated by a desire to reinvigorate its advertising revenue, which has experienced a recent slump. The introduction of Playables aims to tap into the immense potential of the online gaming industry.
The exact monetization strategy for this new initiative remains uncertain. While the Google Play Store already offers numerous mobile games for Android, Playables presents a fresh opportunity for YouTube to explore alternative revenue models.
Notably, the closure of Stadia, Google’s game streaming service, opens the door for YouTube to leverage and potentially enhance Stadia’s technology, allowing it to compete with other cloud gaming services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now or Microsoft’s Xbox cloud gaming service.
