As gamers are now preferring direct-to-consumer models, the video gaming industry has become a legitimate rival to movies and TV. Over the past few years, the gaming industry has advanced dramatically and with live video game streaming service becoming a trend, it is likely to further revolutionize user’s gaming experience.
Twitch, the Amazon-owned live streaming platform, has made some strides in this field with its recently strategic acquisition of IGDB (Internet Games Database), a website that offers all the relevant resources and information about games and gaming industries. The acquisition is claimed to improve the live streaming platform’s search abilities and could effectively direct users to the right content.
According to reliable sources, the deal would witness IGDB’s database feed into the platform’s discovery and search feature set. However, IGDB website that publishes its gaming content from automation and community contributions will still be up and running.
Reportedly, the website contains insightful and reliable information for all games, including supported platforms, genre, description, storyline, critic and member ratings and reviews, publisher, game modes, characters and release dates.
Seemingly, for the past few years, live streaming has positioned itself to be one of the most popular sources of online entertainment. Trending websites like YouTube, Mixer and Twitch are benefiting from live streaming of video games. Moreover, the video game industry is claimed to have generated $138 billion in 2018.
Sources cite that Twitch focuses on broadcasting gaming and esports. The streaming platform had garnered around 3.2 million unique visitors each month, during its launch. However, the website managed to increase its visitors up to 20 million per month in 2012, with both tech giants Google and Amazon trying to acquire the website in 2014.
Currently, the site has over 3 million monthly streamers and is home to one of the best streamers. As for IGDB, it generates its revenue by offering a developer API which cost $99 per month for up to 50K requests, with thousands of users using its API.
Source Credit: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/17/twitch-acquires-gaming-database-site-igdb-to-improve-its-search-and-discovery-features/