In recent years, influencers and streamers have grown significantly in importance. For manufacturers these have become an important advertising medium and they themselves earn a golden nose for the demand. The battle for the biggest names has become correspondingly big – and Microsoft apparently took a lot of money.
The sensation was great when Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, one of the most famous streamers, made a significant change in 2019: he turned his back on Twitch to join Microsoft's streaming service Mixer in the future – and this exclusive agreement apparently brought Ninja a whole bang Money one.
According to a new report by GameDaily.biz the Redmond company had to switch sides to mixers in a total package of between 20 and 30 million US dollars. "Now the streaming war has started. But it took someone to fire the first shot. That was ninja," said Devin Nash, chief marketing officer at N3RDFUSION, a management agency for talented streamers on services like Twitch and YouTube.
The importance of the sector is also evident from other surveys: According to StreamElements streaming analysts, over 12 million hours of live content were watched in the past year, which has continued the trend of significant annual increases.
In order to keep up with the competition for Twitch or YouTube, Microsoft has now chosen this step: With Ninja, they have wrested a real streaming star from the competition, weakened it and strengthened their own presence – even if the exclusive agreement is a whopping 20 to 30 million Should have cost dollars.
Ninja isn't the only popular streamer who's turned his back on Twitch. Counter strike player Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek also left seven million followers there to switch to Mixer. In general, Twitch – although still a heavyweight in the industry – tends to be more in trouble because Facebook, Mixer and YouTube appear to be calling up significantly larger amounts to attract talent. This was also confirmed by Fortnite streamer Rachell "Valkyrae" Hofstetter, who simply states that Google's offer to stream on YouTube Gaming has simply "won a clear yes".
The gamescom edition of "Inside Xbox" is about Gears 5 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint, among others.
