Microsoft’s livestreaming service Mixer will shut down on July 22 and is “teaming up” with Facebook Gaming to give partnered Mixer streams a new home, both companies announced on Monday.
“It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences that Microsoft and Xbox want to deliver for gamers now,” Mixer said in a post today. “So we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform.” The news was first reported by The Verge.
Partnered Mixer streamers tell WIRED they found out about the news when Microsoft announced it.
Despite solid livestreaming technology and top talent acquisitions, including Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, Mixer has struggled to keep up with competitors 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. 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.
Mixer launched in January 2016 as Beam. Just months later, Microsoft acquired it. The service’s pitch is super-low latency and direct streaming from Microsoft’s Xbox in addition to PC. In mid-2019, Blevins and Grzesiek—two of Twitch’s biggest stars—signed exclusive deals to stream on Mixer for undisclosed, likely enormous sums of money.
