Microsoft has made a significant change to how it will start promoting Mixer, the company’ game streaming service. The company is going after Twitch all-stars with the hope that they can bring some life to its own platform.

Announced today, Richard ‘Tyler’ Blevins, also known as Ninja, will be moving exclusively to Mixer. If you are not familiar with his work, and that’s ok, he is the largest Fortnite streamer on Twitch and he is now dumping that service for Mixer.

Clearly, Microsoft is paying out for this and this isn’t some newfound success for Mixer. After Microsoft cut some of their original programming staff in late June, it looks like they are turning those dollars into sponsorships for their game service.

There are some big unknowns though, first being if this is ‘forever’. Blevins states that he is moving away from Twitch but it would be more logical if his contract had a timespan that dictated when and where he could stream. Meaning, this contract will eventually expire and he could go back to Twitch at some point but we don’t know how long the lockup period is but it seems unlikely as it is indefinite.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts Blevins’ game streaming career as it’s quite obvious he found massive success on Twitch. But, this doesn’t mean all his supporters will move over to Mixer and if they don’t, what are the long term ramifications from this move?

That being said, I suspect he has likely considered what could happen by moving to Mixer and it’s more than likely that Microsoft is paying a significant amount of money for this move as well. It will also be interesting to watch to see if Microsoft goes after any other Twitch personalities like Shroud or Dr. Disprect but for now, the company is spending big money to try put Mixer into the limelight.

Tagged with Microsoft, Mixer