Six Alternative Streaming Platforms to Twitch
Choose your streaming platform wisely, there are plenty of alternative platforms other than Twitch.
The all-mighty gaming behemoth was grown out of live-streaming experiment that started from founder Justin Kan live-streaming his life 24/7 and eventually spread to gamers, musicians, artists and creatives. As of 2017, Twitch has 15 million daily users and over 2.2 million content creators every month.
But what other streaming platforms are popular or worth streaming on? Let’s dive into the top five.
- YouTube Gaming
- Mixer
- DLive
- Smashcast
- Periscope
Hey while you are here, why not check out my guides to Twitch streaming:
- Getting Started On Twitch: Your First Stream
- Getting Started On Twitch: Building A Community and Growing Your Following
- The Best Tools for Twitch Streaming
- When Is The Best Time To Stream On Twitch?
YouTube Gaming
After the failed attempt to buy Twitch in 2014, YouTube Gaming was created to be a competitor to the live streaming giant that is Twitch a year later. Bringing together YouTube’s live streaming functionality with YouTube huge audience.
However, YouTube Gaming has struggled to stand apart from it’s giant video brother, and in the end not yet stood out from Twitch. In certain genres of games that already do well on YouTube, it sits as a good place to stream. For example; Minecraft and Call of Duty.
“After the poor launch of YouTube Gaming, the site has turned into a pretty dull-looking website and any push to really build up this community seems to have fizzled out” — streamersquare.com
Let’s not forget how well non-live gaming content already does on YouTube. Potentially it is worth streaming your content and uploading it as a Let’s Play on YouTube? Or taking the best bits and making a highlights video?
1.9 billion people and counting, Facebook is pushing gaming and esport content more and more. Headed up by legendary gamer, Snoopeh, the social media giant is getting involved more and more in the gaming world.
Deals with Paladins, Heroes of the Dorm (Storm) and global esport company ESL have pushed the awareness of Facebook as a destination for high-quality gaming content.
As of yet, it is not the (personal) streaming powerhouse it wishes it was, but I wouldn’t count it out in the future.
Facebook Groups are also a huge opportunity with a number of large communities building up for Twitch streaming on Facebook itself as well as nearly every conceivable game.
Our guide to streaming games on Facebook will be coming soon!
Mixer
Previous called Beam, and now owned by Microsoft. Mixer has been built into the Xbox service and surprisingly not Windows (yet).
In order to diversify itself from Twitch, Mixer is selling itself as a more interactive watching experience as opposed to the more ‘lean-back’ viewing of Twitch.
“Mixer is a next-generation live streaming platform for gamers that lets viewers participate in the gameplay itself. Instead of sitting idle, viewers get to engage with the content directly, creating quests, choosing weapons, or even acting as characters within the game world.” — Microsoft
According to Streamlabs, there are currently 10,000 active monthly streamers on Mixer (dwarfed by Twitch’s 730,000). It’ll be interesting to see what is next for this platform!
(August 2019 Update… Ninja happened!)
Smashcast (Azubu & Hitbox)
Acquired by streaming platform Azubu in early 2017, Hitbox was closed down and merged into the new service called Smashcast in order to combine their audiences.
One of the smaller gaming platforms, it is very similar to Twitch, allowing all the features you will be used to. In comparison to Twitch or even Mixer, view counts are significantly lower on Smashcast, and unless you have a large community that follows you to whichever platform you are on…
I would not recommend streaming on Smashcast.
Mobcrush
Let’s not forget mobile gaming. Some reports put mobile gamers even higher than those on Desktop or Console… which is scarily impressive for a device that only really started appearing in 2007.
An alternative to Mobcrush was Kamcord, but it shut down in November with the team joining transportation service Lyft (oddly enough as I don’t know why they would need live streaming!)
If you are a mobile gamer who wants to get into streaming, Mobcrush may be a good option.
Although there is no concrete data on how many people play mobile games every day/week/month, NewZoo’s 2016 study gives us the best look into income generated by the overall games market.
Periscope
The Twitter-owned platform has lost the hype it initially started with a few years ago, but it becoming a dedicated platform for those doing live shows and even some gaming content!
Periscope released ‘Producer’ just over a year ago, it allows creators to:
“Stream high-quality live video from external sources, including streaming software, hardware encoders, and professional cameras, on both Periscope and Twitter”
It’ll be interesting to see if gamers continue to try Periscope for gaming content, or whether the likes of Twitch and YouTube will hold them within their grasps.
Bonus round:
What if you didn’t have to choose a single platform? Why not try all of the above at the same time…
The brilliant new platform Restream.io allows an individual to stream to multiple platforms as the same time. Having tested this, it may add some delay but works very well!
You can find it here: Restream.io
Another checking out is ‘creative’ specific. Called Picarto, if you stream something like drawing, painting, cooking, writing or game development, this is the niche place for you
Who is The Emergence?
You can find more of what we do here:
- Blog — medium.com/the-emergence
- Twitter — twitter.com/emergencegg
- Website — theemergence.co.uk
- Twitch — twitch.tv/theemergence
- Discord — discordapp.com/invite/VxFA7Xc
Written by Mark Longhurst.
❤
