World's biggest game stream site grabs for a slice of YouTube's pie

Twitch

Twitch, the livestreaming platform that launched in 2011 and acquired by Amazon in 2014, has proven that even an old dog can learn new tricks.

The company announced today at its first community convention held in San Francisco that it will soon allow users to directly upload videos to the site via a YouTube-like interface.

The feature, announced by chief executive of Amazon's Twitch division Emmett Shear, will go live in 2016 and will work in conjunction with a new highlight reel that will shows a user's top videos whenever they're offline.

While this feature might not have come as a surprise four years ago when the service originally launched, the fact that it's coming shortly after the launch of YouTube's brand-new livestreaming platform, YouTube Gaming, is ironic as it removes the biggest differentiator between the two services.

Shear also made promises to improve the usability of the search function of the website - something the community has wanted for some time - and announced that that Twitch will make the switch to an HTML5-based web player sometime next year.

TwitchCon kicked off Friday morning with the announcement that Twitch will partner with the NFL for a weekly show called "EA Sports Madden NFL LIVE" and will continue through Saturday.

Nick Pino

Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.