Cloud gaming is what Google’s purpose is.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Competition” (ID: Coreesports ) , author spiral pills.
YouTube is “painful” when it comes to game streaming.
According to foreign media reports, YouTube and Activision Blizzard E-sports recently reached a rebroadcast agreement for an amount of up to $ 160 million over three years. This broadcast agreement includes all the events of Activision Blizzard E-sports, such as “Call of Duty”, “Overwatch” and “Heartstone”.
Information sources said that “Overwatch” competitions accounted for a large portion of the royalties, and “Call of Duty” competitions also spent part of the money. As for “Furnace Legend” competitions, they are free gifts.
Only comparing prices, Activision Blizzard e-sports switched to YouTube, the intuitive benefits are not particularly obvious. Two years ago, the Overwatch event was won by Amazon-owned Twitch and cost $ 90 million, an average of $ 45 million per year. Today, it has only risen to $ 53 million a year, and two more events have been added.
In this transaction, there are two agreements worth paying attention to: first, important incentive clauses for advertising sales and ratings goals; second, Google Cloud provides cloud computing services for Activision Blizzard.
In other words, Google gives Activision Blizzard the amount and money it wants to negotiate, but on the condition that Activision Blizzard use Google’s cloud service.
Is the copyright of gaming media really fragrant?
It’s no exaggeration to say that YouTube is an old driver in the gaming industry.
In 2015, Google launched the YouTube Gaming program, which focuses on live video streaming of games, and also launched a mobile app of the same name. This move also means that YouTube has officially challenged live broadcast platform Twitch.
To attract users, YouTube Gaming allows users to pay certain subscription fees to certain game anchors every month in order to obtain badges, special chat room access and other privileges. In terms of product experience, it also tries to attract users by providing 1080p / 60 fps high-definition pictures.
After some netizens have experienced it,Twitch is likened to a regular TV, while YouTube Gaming is a TV plus a TiVo digital video recorder.
Of course, the feature that most impresses users is the limitation of two hours of video playback. For example, if you have something to leave while watching LPL and Ti matches, you missed the team fight or the wonderful one-click kill screen, and often you ca n’t find the highlight video in the first place.
You can rest assured that you use YouTube Gaming, because you can drag the video progress bar back to any time within two hours to watch the missing details or perform a wonderful playback.
In terms of competition rights, Youtube also bought the exclusive rights for the 2017 EPL CS: GO event. In general, YouTube has invested energy in products and content, and it has also spent real money.
Unfortunately, the above measures did not make YouTube completely open in the e-sports circle. According to StreamElements data, in the first three quarters of 2018, Twitch live broadcast ratings reached 69%, and Youtube was only 26%.
Facing such a dismal situation, YouTube has chosen a strategic retreat. To put it bluntly, is to give in.
In September 2018, YouTube officially announced that it would stop maintaining YouTube Gaming, an independent application for games and online game live streaming, and users would not be able to download it through normal channels in the future.
I think everyone will hear about what happened next. The game channel under the YouTube main site has taken over most of the functions of YouTube Gaming, and it is still the case today.
Before reviving the independent game live broadcast application, the purchase of the rights to Activision Blizzard e-sports on heavy money alone does not seem to explain YouTube, or Google ’s ambitions in the field of e-sports. Of course, it can’t prove how fragrant the copyright of e-sports media is.
Three years ago, Google partnered with V Agency to buy the copyright of the CS: GO event, and also wanted to suppress Twitch while increasing traffic. Today, Google is watching Blizzard by hand, and has won the rights to games such as “Overwatch” for traffic.
However, Google ’s move is more like defensive, by intercepting the traffic source of the opponent by obtaining the copyright of popular games.
Cloud gaming is the key
For Google,Advertising revenue contributed by games and e-sports events is really small.
On February 4, Beijing time, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, released the fourth quarter of 2019 financial results. According to the financial report, the company’s revenue in 2019 was $ 161.9 billion, of which Google’s revenue was $ 160.7 billion.
Source: Liuhe Consulting
Specifically to Youtube, advertising revenue in 2019 was $ 15.1 billion, accounting for approximately 9% of Google’s revenue. Of this revenue, gaming and e-sports content contributed approximately $ 1.1 billion in revenue, accounting for 7% of advertising revenue.
In comparison, Google Cloud’s performance is relatively brighter.
Google Cloud’s revenue from 2017 to 2019 was US $ 4.1 billion and US $ 5.8 billion, up 43.9% year-on-year and US $ 8.9 billion, up 52.8% year-on-year, accounting for 3.7%, 4.3%, and 5.5% of the company’s revenue, respectively.
Source: Liuhe Consulting
Compare the situation of your competitors. In Q4 2019, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud had revenues of US $ 10 billion (+ 34.1%), US $ 4.7 billion (+ 62.0%), and US $ 2.6 billion (+ 53.0%); Google Cloud revenue scale was lower than Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft Azure, revenue growth rate is higher than Amazon AWS, lower than Microsoft Azure.
It’s not hard to see that Google Cloud is stepping up to catch up with Microsoft and Amazon. How can we gain the favor of big customers and boost revenue?
Google’s solution is cloud gaming.
On the one hand, Google has attracted major game manufacturers, such as Ubisoft, EA, Bethesta, Bungie, R Star, Sega, Namba Dreams Bandai, etc. through its own built-in Stadia cloud gaming platform.
To put it plainly, players use the Stadia cloud gaming platform,