Blizzard Livestream Launched, Twitch 100M Users VS Facebook’s 650M

When it was announced that Facebook would be collaborating with Blizzard Entertainment in order to launch a live streaming platform for video games, many saw it as a direct assault on Twitch’s territory. Now that “Blizzard Streaming” is finally available, streamers can potentially tap into the 650 million video game users that Facebook has to offer.

In terms of technology, Tech Times argues that Twitch has the edge over Blizzard’s offering simply because they have had a long time to develop the features that the popular streaming service currently has. More than that, Twitch is owned by Amazon, and the retail giant is not going to give ground easily.

The live streaming service hosted by Facebook will likely take a few years to gain momentum, but it has the advantage of being more user-friendly and having a bigger audience. Twitch may boast 100 million users a month, but Facebook has 1.7 billion in total, though only about 650 million of those are active in the gaming community.

As for setting it up, gamers simply have to update their Battle.net client and they will see a camera icon beside their username. After that, it’s simply a matter of syncing accounts with Facebook and a streaming window will pop up to indicate that they are now ready to stream.

As PC Mag notes, other streaming services like Twitch involve more complicated setups that some would-be streamers might find a little annoying. This is just not the case with “Blizzard Streaming,” which could be a huge draw for those who want to try their hand at showing their Facebook friends how they play.

Naturally, the service only applies to games that Blizzard owns, which currently include “Overwatch,” “World of Warcraft,” “Diablo 3,” “Hearthstone,” “Starcraft 2,” and “Heroes Of The Storm.” Only PC gamers can have access to the live stream feature right now as well, but Mac users will eventually get their hands on the service.

Finally, only players in North and South America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand will be able to stream their games. A global roll-out is expected sometime in the future