Bye bye Mixer

I have to say, I rarely get surprised anymore as press people regularly know announcements long before it is public. The news that Mixer will stop and that Microsoft is now partnering with Facebook Gaming was quite a shock. I immediately thought about all the Mixer partners who earn money from their content or just streamers who like to hang out with loyal viewers. All of that hard work seems completely gone now. Luckily most streamers have their following on Twitter or another social platform so getting most of the viewers back won’t be an issue. So what’s next? I guess most of the streamers will go to Twitch, not sure what Microsoft is thinking if they expect that people will simply join Facebook Gaming though, because why would they? Why take that risk if you can start over on Twitch?

Having the best marketing. This is what it comes down too, ultimately the reason why they decided to shut down Mixer is because they were forced to put their efforts on Mixer. Now that this black sheep for them is gone they can pay popular streamers on Twitch to show of Halo Infinite and other Xbox Game Studios titles. To date, I still think this was the reason why they bought the exclusive streaming rights from Ninja, promoting Halo. The plan didn’t go as expected, Ninja brought a lot of new viewers but not enough and now Microsoft had to cut everything, the casualties? Every streamer that worked hard to get attention on the least active streaming platform, putting their hope in the hands from Microsoft and the Mixer team. It was making progress, just not fast enough.

Microsoft did try to make it turn tides

Ultimately, Microsoft really tried to make the service more popular, a few examples:

1. Having a major Mixer booth with E3
2. Giving away free games with Xbox streams
3. Exclusivity agreement with Ninja and a huge media campaign for it
4. Exclusivity agreement with Shroud
5. Exclusivity agreement with KingGothalion
6. Integrated with Xbox One and Windows 10

Facebook Gaming?

There is currently no option to directly stream from your console to Facebook Gaming, the first big letdown. We have no idea if this is something that is in development now. For over two years Xbox gamers could simply start streaming to Mixer without much effort, so Xbox gamers who want to stream without having to buy extra hardware are only left with Twitch.

Setting up a new streaming account?

Be sure to let us know on Twitter (DM) and we will add you on our Mixer help page so our readers can decide to follow you.