YouTube Will Live Stream ‘Call of Duty’ Matches

By: Kevin Green  |   November 10th, 2012   |   Business, Google, News

Google owned YouTube has been trying to figure out new ways to make money, with the website moving deeper into content creation in order to meet its goals. Just last month the video streaming site beamed Felix Baumgartner’s space jump live and captured a large number of internet viewers in doing so. This month the website is going another route and letting users watch live matches between players of the Call of Duty video game.

 

Call of Duty developer, Activision, is launching the latest edition of its famed video game series, Call of Duty: Black Ops II next week and the live stream will be available on You Tube for free. The thinking behind the project is that users that are interested in video games and more specifically the Call of Duty franchise will tune in to watch the live matches. This is not a shot in the dark for Google who knows from previous experience that ‘in-game’ footage grabs a lot of eyeballs on You Tube.

 

Google had a very successful response during the World of Warcraft launch event when the video site showed footage of players across the globe playing the popular game. Another success story for Google is the extremely popular Machinima. The YouTube channel shows recorded video of players in video games as they perform battles or give tutorials on how to complete certain tasks in the game.

 

The move is a no-brainer for Google and Activision because You Tube will be getting free content that is in hot demand while Activision gets free marketing on one of the world’s most popular sites. Since all the content is also user generated there is no cost of hiring someone to play the game.

 

The Call of Duty launch may be an interesting new direction for You Tube and Google. The video site may be able to get a lot of people to watch one live global event although those do not occur all the time. However, live content for a niche market is something the company can build a business model around and make some good money from with companies looking to market their product to Google’s global audience.

 

Source: All Things D