Microsoft is giving up on its video game streaming service "Mixer", encouraging gamers to use its competitor Facebook's service instead.
"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", Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, wrote in a blog post on Monday.
Microsoft bought Beam, later rebranded to Mixer, in 2017, after its competitor Amazon obtained the Twitch streaming service in 2014. Microsoft sought to beat Twitch's popularity, even signing a deal with Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. Now it seeks to partner up with Facebook, namely through Project xCloud.
"As part of our work together, Project xCloud will help us redefine future gaming experiences on Facebook Gaming", Vivek Sharma, head of Facebook Gaming, shared on Monday. "Imagine a scenario where people can instantly move from watching a Facebook Gaming creator’s livestream to jumping in and playing the game with their closest friends, all in one click."
Users will be able to stream from Mixer until 22 July. After that, they will be redirected from its homepage to Facebook.
At the same time, the company will continue to develop games and console hardware, including the popular Xbox, and run a cloud service for playing games.
