The news of Microsoft’s very own live streaming service, Mixer, closing shocked the gaming community. The Xbox chief shed light on the matter in a recent interview.
One of Twitch’s online streaming rivals, Mixer, recently made headlines after its executives decided to cut the cord and instead merge with Mark Zuckerburg’s Facebook Gaming.
Micky News previously reported that Xbox head, Phil Spencer, already explained the reason behind their own online streaming services closure. However, a more recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz provided a more personal take on the matter from Spencer.
No regrets about Mixer closing
Based on the interview and what was obviously apparent upon the release of the said announcement, the decision to close Mixer was a strategic move.
Spencer did admit the news was disappointing, especially with that big of a project getting shut down. However, he further explained the decisions that they have to make considering they are venturing into a creative industry.
Spencer told GamesIndustry.biz, “I don’t have regrets. You make decisions with the best information you have at the time, you apply your best effort, and we’re in a creative industry. We are in a hits-driven industry.”
The Xbox chief continued to elaborate that they should not be afraid to try “thing that might not work.”
"I think it's fundamental to us that we're not afraid of trying things that might not work." https://t.co/JT1Xpjvasa
— GamesIndustry (@GIBiz) July 13, 2020
Mixer and its community
Microsoft acquired Mixer in 2016 from its “teenage founders.” At the time, the website was still called Beam.
To gather a bigger audience to the streaming platform, Mixer acquired two of the biggest names in the world of streaming—Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “shroud” Grzesiek. Reports have it that Ninja, a master of Fortnite streaming, reportedly received a whopping $10 million offer to stream exclusively on Mixer, and received an even bigger offer of $30 million as a contract buy-out after the Mixer closing announcement.
Micky News has recently reported that neither of the big names jumped over Facebook Gaming. In fact, Ninja just started streaming on YouTube Gaming, instead of reverting back to Twitch.
FIRST YOUTUBE STREAM EVER THIS IS LIT https://t.co/r3BxaPPabY
— Ninja (@Ninja) July 8, 2020
In terms of the volume of Microsoft’s gaming community, Spencer feels confident.
“Our growth in content is a direct off-shoot of us looking at okay, we’ve got Azure as a cloud and we can build a cloud gaming platform with xCloud on top of that,” says Xbox boss. “Community, Xbox Live is almost 100 million monthly players, growing across all platforms, we’re seeing people come in from iOS, Android, we’re on Switch now, we’re on PC, we’re on obviously Xbox. We see that community continue to grow.”
Indeed enough, the gaming industry continues to grow, with many of the games now expanding to mobile. The next-generation consoles are about to be released and Nintendo Switch is also making a big impact as of late. As Spencer said, this is a hit-driven industry, which is why strategic plays must take place.
Featured image courtesy of Gameslice/YouTube Screenshot