Microsoft Corp on Monday said that it was throwing in the towel on its livestream gaming platform and teaming up with Facebook Inc to better compete with rivals such as Amazon.com Inc-owned Twitch Interactive Inc.
Microsoft Mixer is to be shuttered on July 22, the tech giant said in a statement.
“It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences that Microsoft and Xbox want to deliver for gamers now, so we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform,” the Mixer team said.
The gamers would be encouraged to transition to Facebook Gaming, which has about 700 million people who play or watch games every month.
“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,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, the gaming division of Microsoft.
Microsoft in August 2016 announced that it was buying the livestream service Beam to bolster its effort to boost its ranks of people who play and watch games online.
However, the service, renamed Mixer in 2017, struggled to gain traction against Twitch, Google-owned YouTube and Facebook Gaming.
Spencer said the move to shutter Mixer would allow Microsoft to focus on its other gaming efforts, including “the world-class content being made by our 15 Xbox Game Studios, the evolution of Xbox Game Pass, the launch of Xbox Series X, and the global opportunity to play anywhere with Project xCloud,” referring to the cloud-based game service.
“Bringing that vision to life, for as many people as possible, will see us working with different partners, platforms and communities for years to come,” Spencer added. “It will also see us adjusting our strategy to best serve players wherever they gather daily, which includes the category of livestreaming.”
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