Tracking the ebbs and flows across livestreaming platforms, content creators, and the subjects of those creators’ work are all key to understanding the trajectory of the livestream industry, and StreamElement’s latest report has been enlightening. In the last quarter, Fortnite’s lock on the top spot has weakened, Apex Legends has fallen out of the top 10, and Facebook Gaming has moved up to the top three platforms to stream.
StreamElements’ report last quarter was an eye-opener that further established Fortnite’s dominance despite the rise of Apex Legends and showed that Richard “Ninja” Blevins wasn’t the top streamer on Twitch. This time around, Fortnite remains on top but is losing ground to non-gaming streams. Twitch is an accessible platform and content creators are using it for way more than just showing off games to their communities. The “Just Chatting” category grew over 7% in the last quarter while Fortnite and League of Legends, the top two games in the first two quarters, dropped 3.6% and 5.9%, respectively.
In Twitch’s “Just Chatting” you’ll find creators discussing current events with their communities, taking their viewers on the go as they travel, and other things that treat Twitch more like the social media platforms we are used to. Apex Legends falling off the charts is somewhat surprising but it will likely see a resurgence this quarter with the new season of content going live. Hearthstone took its place in the second quarter.
While Blevins may still not be the No. 1 streamer, there is no one else that can claim that title consistently for the time being. Turner “Tfue” Tenney led the charge in two of the three months in the second quarter, which includes April, May, and June. Jaryd “Summit1g” Lazar led in the third month and Ninja took a top-three spot through two of the months while falling to fourth in June.
As far as the top livestreaming platforms, Twitch still holds a comfortable lead as 70% of the hours watched in the second quarter were on Twitch and the platform had a little under four times as many hours as YouTube Live, which takes second place. The intriguing takeaway is the rise of Facebook Gaming, which took the third-place spot over Mixer. To cement how influential all four of these platforms are, the total hours watched is over 3.7 billion.
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.
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.