- Ninja has left Twitch, and will be
exclusively streaming to Mixer.
That is the news that has come out today,
and love or hate the guy there is no denying,
that he has been the face of Twitch
and probably the face of streaming
for the last couple of years.
Now although Ninja's stream hasn't been
enjoying the same heights that it was,
when Fortnite first started blowing up
and he got to play with Drake and all those kind of things,
there's still no denying that he is one
of the biggest streamers on the platform,
and this is a massive blow to Twitch.
Especially as he is joining
one of their biggest competitors.
Moves like this aren't really anything new
they've happened in the sport world,
and even in the Esports world for a while
basically, a huge celebrity leaving to join
a lesser or smaller competing team, for huge sums of money,
and I think that is really what's happened here.
I don't think anybody is denying
that there must've been some huge financial
incentive behind this move for Ninja.
Microsoft have seriously put up the big
bucks to bring one of the biggest
streamers across to their platform.
Whether or not it's actually gonna work out
for both parties remains to be seen,
but it's certainly an exciting move
and something that I'm gonna be
enjoying watching from the sidelines.
The reason that I'm excited is because competition,
no matter what niche we're talking about,
competition between companies is always good
for the consumer.
Twitch has clearly needed a major
competitor for a long time, there's been
a lot of complaints recently about how
Twitch is run, and really they can kind of
do exactly what they want to do because there
isn't another major player
that is also taking live streaming as seriously.
Now you have to consider how critical the timing was
on this press release and on the
decision to leave Twitch for Mixer.
I'm sure it's something that's been
in the works for a long time but the actual
timing of the announcement, just after the
Fortnite World Cup where pretty much
every news station and news website is talking
about Fortnite, it's at the top of everybody's list
because these players have earned so much money,
and also Twitch is just under
so much scrutiny at the moment.
There's the Alinity drama and there's
just a countless number of partners that have
been banned for seemingly little reason.
There's a lot of speculation as to whether
streamers are gonna be leaving Twitch in general
so just the timing of this announcement
is absolutely perfect and I have no doubt
that that was well planned by both Ninja and Mixer.
According to a press release, Ninja won't just
be a streamer for Mixer either,
he will also be attending multiple events for Mixer
so he'll effectively be the face of Mixer,
kind of similar to how he was the face of Twitch.
So this is a bit of a scary time for Twitch,
the Streamlabs and Streamelements, their Q2 reports
came out the other week and they actually
showed that it was the first time that Twitch
had lost viewership whilst Mixer and YouTube
and other platforms had all gained viewership
again for another running quarter.
There's also some speculation, although not confirmed
that this is just the first of a few announcements,
of big streamers moving across to Mixer.
I can't confirm any of those but this
would certainly be really exciting,
if this gonna be a string of streamers that
Mixer have managed to bring over to their platform.
One thing that was pointed out was that Twitch,
instantly, as soon as the announcement went live,
removed Ninja's verified partner badge
from his profile page which to me just
kind of screams desperation, I'm sure they have
better things to be doing than making sure
somebody's partner badge is removed just
'cause they've announced they're gonna be
streaming to a different platform,
but I thought it was a funny thing to point out.
Now the reason that I think there must've
been such a big amount of money behind this deal
is because, really, not only is Mixer not as popular
as a platform for viewers as Twitch is
but also the revenue streams aren't as well built in.
Whereas Twitch has the Twitch Prime subs,
it's all built into Amazon Prime, a lot of viewers
already have Amazon Prime accounts and they
can support a streamer once a month, kind of for free
if you've already subscribed to Amazon Prime.
Mixer doesn't have that kind of system already in place
so he's definitely not going to be
earning as much money from the platform
and from subscribers, which is why there must've
been such a big sum of money up front.
One interesting thing to think about is that
Ninja mentions in his announcement video
that he is going back to his roots,
and wants to go back to what he loved about streaming.
But that back to his roots sentence is kind of
interesting because, if you know that Ninja
started out his streaming career, as a professional
Halo player or a competitive Halo player.
And obviously Microsoft owns Mixer,
Microsoft also owns Halo and there is a new
Halo game coming out, so I wonder if anything
behind this going back to his roots
is to do with the new Halo game coming out
as well maybe that's part of the partnership.
Microsoft not only pushing their platform,
with a Ninja partnership, but maybe
also pushing their new game Halo.
If you head to the Mixer website right now
there is a large banner across the top,
announcing the new partnership with Ninja,
and also notice to say that if you subscribe to
Ninja right now you can do so for free.
It doesn't really do much you just get
some of his emotes and things like that,
similar to what you got on Twitch I doubt
Ninja actually makes any money based on
the number of subscribers that he gets
from this free sponsorship banner.
And if you actually head to Ninja's
channel on Mixer, you'll see it filled with
people chatting even though he's not
streaming yet he starts his stream tomorrow
from Lollapalooza, but there's already so
many people in there chatting and starting
all sorts of memes about Twitch.
So how does this affect you as a streamer,
well unless you are a god-like Fortnite player
and maybe you don't mind dying half of your hair pink,
and half of your hair blue, there's probably an
opportunity for you there to be a Ninja 2.0
and sort of create a parody stream where you're
just pretending to be Ninja for the next few weeks.
I'm sure somebody's gonna do that
and have some success with it,
but for the people that are already
streaming on Mixer this is a huge opportunity because
there's gonna be a lot of eyeballs
coming to the website that weren't already there.
So if you're streaming there some of these
eyeballs are gonna trickle down,
and find their way to the smaller streamers.
So definitely some opportunity
for people streaming on Mixer.
Also, Mr. Beast has just tweeted that
he is gonna be doing a donating to Mixer streamers,
similar to his donating to Twitch streamers
video so if you want to enter that lottery
I'm sure a lot of people are gonna be
streaming on Mixer just for the hopes that
they're gonna get a donation from Mr. Beast.
So whether you think this is a
stupid move on Ninja's part, or you think
it's a great time to leave Twitch,
I just know that I think it's a great time
for there to be a proper competitor for Twitch,
because it's just going to be better for us
they're both going to be battling,
building the best features for us,
creating the best value for us,
both as streamers, as well as as viewers.
So, I'm all for it, I really hope that the move
goes well and especially if there's gonna be more
big streamers moving across to Mixer.
I just think it's a really exciting time.
Either way, let me know what
you think down in the comments below.
Also, the comments section is gonna be
going on on Discord, Twitter, Instagram so
tag me in anything that you think I need to see,
and I will see you guys in the next video, peace!
(gentle music)