After 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 the fact that many people don’t trust Facebook nor want to partake in working with them.
This puts the Mixer community in a tough spot and also raises the question of how Xbox players will stream in the future given the growth of streaming and upcoming launch of the next-generation Xbox(s). Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, took to Twitter to presumably try and reassure the Xbox community that they should expect options.
Yes, we absolutely want to give gamers choice of where to stream from Xbox.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 23, 2020
The issue seems quite obvious however. There are only a handful of relevant streaming options. Twitch is the obvious go-to and still available. However, if streamers don’t want to work with Twitch, at this point in time they are left with no other native option on Xbox consoles.
Even once Facebook Gaming integration is presumably added, there’s a large percentage of the community that doesn’t want to work with them (including Shroud and Ninja it would seem). The only other option is YouTube Gaming but there’s a long-standing contention between Google and Microsoft and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google focus on some type of exclusivity for Stadia as well.
In the end, we hope that Phil Spencer and the Xbox team is truly dedicated to helping players on the Xbox platform integrate ways to stream easily and natively to multiple platforms. It only makes sense for the future.
