For quite a while now, there’s been rumblings that something didn’t feel right at Mixer. After signing a few big name streamers to the service, the support model seemed to take a nosedive and Xbox in general stopped talking about and promoting it. It seems the writing was on the wall.
As of July 22nd, Xbox is shutting down Mixer as we know it. You will no longer be able to stream from your Xbox or PC to Mixer and the app will be disabled. So what does the future hold for Xbox in the streaming arena? Well it seems they are going to partner with Facebook Gaming.
Announced today via Xbox Wire:
Beginning today, Facebook Gaming will make it easy for anyone in the Mixer community to join, if they choose to do so. We will work to transition the Mixer community over the next few weeks. Starting on July 22, all Mixer sites and apps will redirect users to Facebook Gaming. For Mixer Partners, streamers, and viewers, we expect you’ll have many questions – you can find more details on how we will support the transition to Facebook Gaming on the Mixer blog here.
Transitioning the Mixer community is a key part of a broader effort that Xbox and Facebook Gaming are embarking on, bringing new experiences and opportunities to Facebook, where every month more than 700 million people play a game, watch a gaming video, or interact in a gaming Group.
According to Xbox, this is also a play to further enhance and expand future xCloud functionality when it launches later this year and beyond.
Key to this vision is our Project xCloud technology, which we see delivering games to all kinds of screens and windows in your life, including those on Facebook. Gaming is already part of our social fabric, and Project xCloud can take you from discussing a new game – whether it’s a funny in-game moment posted by a friend, an ad, or an ongoing stream – directly to playing it. In the future, through the power of Xbox Live and Project xCloud, we see there being just one click between “I’m watching” and “I’m playing.
Our Take
First and foremost, we certainly hope that the Mixer staff is going to be taken care of during this transition. Assuming so, this is very disappointing news and again, we’re not sure why Microsoft/Xbox seem to spend so much money to enter an industry only to then back out of it a short while later. Mixer had some unique ideas and pushed technology forward for streaming but was never fully utilized by Xbox until sadly it was too late. Amazon’s adoption of Twitch only further expanded the challenge of competition (which is likely a major reason why Xbox is partnering Mixer with Facebook).
We’ll see how this transition occurs and what this means to the Xbox Series X and xCloud in the future.
It’s a smart move overall. Mixer was a loser financially, but selling it off to Facebook, and probably getting rights to stream XCloud in the near future is what matters. Facebook is huge, I’m not a member of Facebook, but I can’t deny what they control. It’s a great business move if you play the cards correctly. Microsoft thinks big picture, not console warrior mentality. It’s above most people’s heads. 5 years down the road isn’t acceptable to a fanboy, but to a stockholder, this screams intelligent move. Big picture people!
[…] the news yesterday of Mixer shutting down and transitioning to a partnership with Facebook Gaming, the Xbox team faced a healthy amount of backlash due to both the handling of the announcement and […]