Update: The Facebook Gaming app is now live for Android users. You can download it from here.
Facebook’s gaming division is ramping up efforts to compete with Twitch and YouTube with a new, dedicated mobile app that will let enthusiasts easily discover and watch live gameplays — leaving no stone unturned in its effort to capitalize on the spike in video game streaming.
Simply called Facebook Gaming, according to a report in The New York Times, the app is expected to launch publicly for Android phones on Monday, April 20, after about 18 months of testing in select regions. The company eventually plans to release it for iOS “once Apple approves” the listing.
In addition to curating content from professional streamers, the app will also allow users to play casual games such as Words With Friends, and it includes a feature called Go Live to let anyone stream themselves playing mobile games.
Until now, users who wanted to watch gaming streams on Facebook had to jump through a few hoops on the already cluttered main app. The social networking giant claims 700 million of its 2.5 billion monthly users engage with gaming content; the new app is expected to make Facebook Gaming a lot more accessible for these millions of users. But other than Messenger, Facebook hasn’t had much success with spinoff apps, so it remains to be seen whether this new app ends up being an exception.
“Investing in gaming, in general, has become a priority for us because we see gaming as a form of entertainment that really connects people. It’s entertainment that’s not just a form of passive consumption but entertainment that is interactive and brings people together,” Fidji Simo, head of the Facebook app, told the Times.
Over the last few weeks, as video game streaming figures surge across the world, companies have been actively optimizing their platforms to capture the growing traffic. Even after so many years, however, Facebook Gaming hasn’t been able to stand its grounds against Amazon’s Twitch and YouTube that together today command over 90% of the market. And looming over the horizon is Microsoft’s Mixer that has been roping in popular streamers through exclusive contracts.
As per StreamLabs, a live-streaming platform, from February to March, watch hours soared by 23% on Twitch, 10.7% on YouTube Gaming Live, 3.8% on Facebook Gaming, and 14.9% on Mixer.
Facebook itself, earlier in April, launched a tool called Tournaments that enabled games to organize and take part in virtual competitions. “People are watching streams and they’re like, ‘I want to be a streamer,’ and with Go Live it’s literally just a few clicks and then live, you’re a streamer,” added Simo added.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.