Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and partnering with Facebook Gaming

guest · Jun 22, 2020

Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and partnering with Facebook Gaming
It’s a strategic move for the future of xCloud
June 22, 2020
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/22/...g-facebook-gaming-partnership-xcloud-features

Microsoft is closing its Mixer service on July 22nd and plans to move existing partners over to Facebook Gaming. The surprise announcement means Mixer partners and streamers will be transitioned to Facebook Gaming starting today, and Microsoft will no longer operate Mixer as a service in a month’s time.

Microsoft has struggled to reach the scale needed for Mixer to compete with Twitch, YouTube, and even Facebook Gaming which has led to today’s decision.

“We started pretty far behind, in terms of where Mixer’s monthly active viewers were compared to some of the big players out there,” says Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s head of gaming, in an interview with The Verge.
Microsoft’s choice to partner with Facebook is clearly a strategic one that’s also related to broadening the appeal of its upcoming xCloud game streaming service and its overall gaming efforts.
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Microsoft faced a decision between ditching Mixer, selling it off, or even investing more money in without a guarantee it would hit the scale it needs to compete. “It wasn’t as much about return on sell, it was about finding a partnership that was the best things for the community and streamers,” explains Spencer.
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Microsoft: The Next Step for Mixer

guest · Jun 23, 2020

Mixer failed — here’s why
Let me count the ways
June 23, 2020
https://www.theverge.com/21300245/mixer-failed-microsoft-social-media-instagram-streaming

This was a long time coming. For years now, Mixer has struggled, lagging far behind the live-streaming platforms it was meant to compete with — Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch — and by the end of July it will be dead. Even the director of Xbox admitted that Mixer started “pretty far behind,” which is to say too far behind to ever catch up to its ostensible peers. But what happened, exactly?

It’s not that Mixer was technologically flawed, or one of those businesses that’s a bad idea on its face (see: Juicero). It had some good ideas, paid for some great streamers, and the whole enterprise failed anyway. In my opinion, Mixer was doomed from the start because what Microsoft never seemed to understand was that its live-streaming platform was first and foremost a community.
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In retrospect, the final nail in Mixer’s coffin was bringing Tyler “Ninja” Blevins onto the service by offering him tens of millions of dollars; that was the exact moment that Microsoft decided that organically growing streamers was too hard or too expensive. It tried to buy an audience, which is not how social sites operate. Social sites that don’t fail, that is.
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guest · Jul 22, 2020

Mixer shuts down today
It’s the end of an era
July 22, 2020
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/22/21334082/mixer-shut-down-twitch-facebook-gaming-partnership

As I write this, the top channel on Mixer right now is broadcasting a stream of Pokémon Yellow played by whoever’s in chat — á la Twitch Plays Pokémon. It’s titled “YouPlay presents: Mixer Doomsday party.
Even if its pulse hasn’t stopped for good, Mixer is dead, with the site shutting down today per Microsoft’s announcement in June.

Mixer also started the exclusivity war for streamers, which bumped up salaries for huge talent and started some uncomfortable conversations across the industry, which will probably be its lasting legacy. And the technology that powered the site was incredibly low latency, which meant streamers could interact with their viewers almost in real time.
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I’ve spent much of the last month talking to Mixer partners about the impending shutdown of the site. They were all shocked at how quickly everything fell apart; to one person, they felt like they had lost their home.
That said, you can recreate a community of streamers. Right after Mixer’s “strategic partnership” with Facebook Gaming was announced, a spreadsheet began to circulate among the Mixer (and before that, Beam) streamers who’d been on the platform the longest.

There, alphabetized and linked, were the people who made Mixer what it was, ready to show up for each other again.
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