During the pandemic, live-streaming became a staple for entertainment with platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming (following their acquisition of Microsoft’s Mixer) becoming a reliable resource for new content.
While the wave was strong, as Bloomberg outlined, numbers demonstrated that tv/video streaming services celebrated 48% of adults in the United States had subscribed to at least one streaming service.
According to Forbes, 15 months into the pandemic found that 28% of United States online adults say that they are fatigued from watching so much television and film, with 21% saying that they were planning to spend less time watching television/video.
And while those numbers seem to outline a potential interest decline, that same report found that 41% enjoy watching TV/video even more now than they did prior to the pandemic, and 42% continue to rely on TV/video as a distraction from the real world.
These trends had a direct impact on live-streaming in the gaming industry as well, as both Twitch and Facebook Gaming saw incredible numbers during the pandemic (h/t The Verge).
But now, live-streaming faces a critical juncture, especially following a 2022 year that saw consumption on content streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu, surpass numbers posted by cable television and other traditional mediums, for the first time in history.
Twitch has seen some myriad of continued success following the lockdown, as The Gamer outlined back in May 2022, but platforms such as Facebook Gaming (which has scaled back considerably), and Trovo (which has failed to maintain footing in the competitive space) take major steps back.
YouTube has diversified, and is almost into it’s own category, a space that Twitch may lean more into, but there is no live streaming platform that provides the confidence that it can hang with the giants of the industry – Netflix, Hulu.
In fact, it can be argued that gaming live streaming platforms aren’t either a lucrative, or appealing venture when considering mainstream market impact, regardless of the angle or the revenue split with creators.
While platforms continue to pop up, the warts of the industry are under a bigger spotlight, but Gamactica has been teasing their own introduction of a new platform called Disko, with no tentative launch date revealed.
Gamactica has been the search engine, social media, and growth platform that has carved an innovative place in the content industry, and it is likely that whenever Disko launches, it will completely innovate and reshape the entire industry.
The industry is poised for a new boom, and Disko could be it.
