It came out with a bang and went out in a mass exodus.
Such is the tale of Mixer, Microsoft’s erstwhile competitor to Amazon’s uber-popular Twitch live streaming service. Of course, if you ask anyone in the gaming community they’ll tell you that they saw this coming from a mile away.
Though big, bold power moves like luring Ninja away from Twitch did a lot to generate press for the platform, Mixer just couldn’t attract the attention and talent that its rival has already.
Microsoft executive VP Phil Spencer said the shuttering was due to not scaling to their vision quickly enough.
Ultimately, the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the service for them as quickly and broadly as possible. It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences we want to deliver to gamers now, so we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform.
Phil Spencer
Streamer phenomenon Ninja said that his Mixer community was a positive one and added there would be choices coming down the pipeline.
“I love my community and what we built together on Mixer. I have some decisions to make and will be thinking about you all as I make them,” Ninja said.
Given the sudden closure of the service, the platform’s creators are being allowed to return to whatever service they want. This includes the potential for Ninja to return to Twitch, among other things. But the recommendation from Mixer themselves is that former contributors move on over to Zuckerberg’s effort at Facebook Gaming. Whether that will bear any fruit is another story entirely.
Interestingly, it is being reported that Ninja and other big-name creators turned down exclusivity offers from Facebook and took buyouts instead. It is rumored that Ninja’s contract buyout was some $30 million. However, given his signing contract of $50 million, it’s probably not far off since Mixer is the one that unilaterally decided to end things in this instance.
Head of Facebook Gaming Vivek Sharma said said the move to shut down Mixer could be a good thing for integration of streaming and existing Facebook features.
Imagine a scenario where people can instantly move from watching a Facebook Gaming creator’s livestream to jumping in and playing the game with their closest friends, all in one click. Project xCloud can help change the way people discover games by expanding our Playable Ads format, enabling Xbox games on your mobile device. While scrolling News Feed, people could try out awesome games from Xbox Game Pass immediately, further blurring the line between discovery and play.
Vivek Sharma
As one of the fastest-growing segments of the industry, and as a huge component of the burgeoning eSports field, the live streaming competition between the industry’s biggest players is likely to only heat up in the future.
Did you use Mixer? What are your thoughts on Microsoft’s decision to close it down? Let us know in the comments section below.
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