And just like that, Microsoft has ended its bid to dominate the live-streaming market. The company announced via blog post that they are discontinuing its Mixer service, opting to instead apply those resources to a newly established partnership with Facebook Gaming.
In the post, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer explains that the decision to shutter Mixer is the result of it not being able to adequately scale.
"Ultimately, the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the service for them as quickly and broadly as possible. It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences we want to deliver to gamers now, so we’ve decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform. To better serve our community’s needs, we’re teaming up with Facebook to enable the Mixer community to transition to Facebook Gaming."
However, despite Spencer's PR-friendly wordage, the writing has been on the walls for quite some time. It's no secret that Mixer has struggled to find an audience, despite Microsoft dropping millions of dollars on exclusivity deals with prominent streamers.
That said, how Microsoft arrived at partnering with Facebook is beyond me, but I'd imagine that it boils down to dollars and cents. In any case, it would appear that the two companies are joining forces to square off against the likes of Twitch and Youtube Gaming.
RIP Mixer, we hardly knew you.
