Twitch in the recent days have been the new hype. It is the best place for gamers who are looking to stream their gaming skills live. Twitch is the most widely supported service, it supports PC, Consoles, and even smartphones. Most gamers use this service, while with more and more streamers and viewers being added to the service, we have started to see a couple of downtime on the website, which sometimes makes it difficult to both the viewers as well as the streamers.
Recently Twitch also changed some of their guidelines after which more and more people are looking to move from Twitch to other services. Today we are going to talk about a couple of different services which are just the same as Twitch and offers almost the same functionality.
1. IBM Cloud Video (Previously Ustream)
It is a US based company who works on a general streaming platform UStream. This service allows the views to watch sports events, talk shows, someone’s private live stream, and other gaming streams like you might have been looking at Twitch. This makes this service the biggest competitor to Twitch. The application is majorly managed by IDM, and this makes it mostly responsible for business videos of US. The service is also used by Facebook, LinkedIn, Intuit, NASA, and Salesforce for their internal usage.
If you are thinking that they are not able to integrate with PlayStation consoles, then you don’t need to worry as they have an easy solution for that also. UStream is a great platform with close to 0 downtimes which Twitch in the recent past has been struggling to provide. UStream also comes with a native client for smartphones and Computers to directly stream through the application.
2. YouTube Gaming
As Google saw Twitch growing in the market, they got the concept of YouTube Gaming as the response to Twitch. This service is mostly like the standard YouTube, which is in a dark color scheme. This version is solely focused on live and on-demand gaming videos. Here you can easily find game related videos to explore.
Here we get a similar section discretion as twitch as Recommended, Spotlight, and trending. This allows the user to easily watch the video they demand to watch. There is also a live tab where you can get all the recent videos which are currently live. This makes most of the gamers to move on to YouTube Gaming for a better platform support. Most of the audience of YouTube gaming are from the original YouTube only which makes it easy for Google to make the concept popular. If you are looking for monetization then it is the easiest way to monetize your videos. The platform is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.
3. Mixer
Mixer is a product of Microsoft, which is launched to give a tough competition to Twitch. Mixer is a user-friendly game broadcasting platform which sports several features to broadcast game videos live. Microsoft developed SDK to directly integrate Mixer program to games to allow the user to interact with other gamers.
4. Smashcast.tv
It was earlier known as hitbox, while in some countries as Azubu. They are the oldest of the streamers available on the internet. They were two different brands who later combined to give a better service to their users. The Smashcast.tv is one of the best examples of HTML5 & JavaScript Integration, and how to make a user-friendly website with easy and fluid operations.
This website has largely being used by tournament organizers and sports teams to showcase their game live to the distant people easily. They offer a wide variety of services which are just tailored in order to take over the best in class service of Twitch. They have been delivering a lean – inexperience to the viewers and they have been enjoying the broadcast with the unique toolsets. They also support chat casting capabilities which is something which Twitch has not been supporting lately. Smashcast.tv is available on Windows & Mac along with Android and iOS.
5. Periscope
This is another live streaming app which was brought to us by Twitter for video streaming. Although Periscope was launched by a separate company, it made its main debut when Twitter brought it back in 2015. Periscope is the most preferred service for live streaming who use their phones to live to stream the video and connect it via their twitter feeds.
Getting connected via the twitter feeds allow the streamer to get maximum viewership in any particular niche. Just like Twitch, Periscope enables the viewers to interact with the streamer in real life, hence they can help the streamer to play the game or do anything based on the viewer’s suggestion. Periscope also offers an additional feature of choosing the mode you want to stream in where you can stream the video either in portrait or landscape mode. They also have a feature to block and blacklist a couple of viewers from viewing your feed, if you feel they are annoying you during the feed.
Periscope can easily be streamed with the help of cameras, unlike all the other services which require a Computer screen or a mobile screen to stream the videos. This application is only available on iOS and Android, while it is not available on Windows and MacOs.
These are a couple of great alternatives of Twitch with which you can easily stream your videos. These mediums can work as an alternative to grow your audience, you must stick with any one of the above included, as using more than one medium can make you lose a large number of audience, hence it is always preferred to stick to any one of the medium for better results.
If you are a Console or PC user, you must look forward to the client you are using to stream and if they support the above-included mediums or not. If they are not supporting the medium, then you must first get an alternative medium which provides the same features as per your current set of mediums. Twitch is best as it supports all the different mediums. All the above-included websites and apps support Android and iOS and hence if you are using Android and iOS you must choose one which natively supports them, and doesn’t rely on the third party as per Twitch.
If you have any other option for Twitch do let us know in the comment section below. Also, comment about your experience with any of the above websites or applications.