Mixer shutdown leads to a new partnership with FacebookGaming
June 23, 2020
In a series of tweets on June 22, Microsoft shocked the gaming community when it announced that it was shutting down Mixer, the Seattle-based video game live streaming platform, and partnering with FacebookGaming.
The first tweet announcing the shutdown addressed Mixer partners and streamers.
https://twitter.com/watchmixer/status/1275134189738713088?lang=en
This first tweet was shortly followed by another series of tweets detailing how the platform would be helping its partners and streamers transfer to the other platform as well as announcing that Mixer would continue to function until July 22 before shutting down for good.
The announcement came as a shock to the gaming community. Mixer was a relatively new streaming service having only launched in January of 2016 as Beam. It was later bought by Microsoft a couple months later. On the surface, Mixer seemed to be growing steadily and in 2019 it announced the signing of two of Twitch’s biggest streamers, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek.
On the surface, everything seemed to be going great, so what went wrong? Mixer’s numbers were terrible and the platform was just not pulling the viewership numbers that competitors like Twitch and Youtube were. In an article featured on Wired, author Cecilia D’Anastasio compared the numbers from Mixer with numbers from Twitch and Youtube.
“In April, viewers watched 37 million hours of gaming content on Mixer to Twitch’s 1.5 billion and YouTube’s 461 million, according to data from streaming analytics company Arsenal.gg.,” D’Anastasio wrote. “The year-over-year stats are grim, too: Hours watched on Twitch grew 101 percent between April 2019 and 2020, while Mixer’s increased just .2 percent.”
So despite its perceived success, Mixer was struggling. And, with the massive undisclosed contracts with streamers like Ninja and Shroud, it becomes more clear as to why the service crumbled. As for the decision to partner with Facebook Gaming, it appears to be very smart for Mixer. In the Wired article D’Anastasio looked into the numbers behind Facebook gaming and they’re promising.
“Facebook Gaming has seen healthy 72 percent month-over-month growth in hours watched between March and April,” D’Anastasio wrote. “In April, gamers watched 291 million hours on Facebook Gaming—nearly eight times Mixer’s.”
Though the shutdown of Mixer and new partnership with Facebook Gaming was very abrupt, it is quite simple. Mixer was not having success competing with already established streaming platforms. It was spending large sums of money and not seeing the necessary results. In the end, Microsoft made the smart business decision to cut their losses.
