After acquiring Beam in 2016 and renaming it to Mixer the following year, Microsoft said on Monday that it is shutting down the operations side of its game streaming platform. The company will transition the Mixer community over to Facebook Gaming.
According to Microsoft, Mixer will continue to run until July 22, 2020. After that, the Mixer.com site will redirect visitors to fb.gg. Xbox One owners will not be able to stream their gameplay using the integrated Mixer tool. Instead, they must use the Twitch app or connect the console to a PC and stream using software.
The news is disappointing given the service itself only lived four years. Microsoft scooped up Beam seven months after its initial debut and integrated it into its Xbox division. That brought native game streaming to Windows 10 by the end of the year and the Xbox One five months later.
But a good look at the streaming numbers show that Mixer didn’t have a huge audience. In the first quarter of 2020, Twitch commanded 65% of the game streaming market with 3.1 billion hours watched. YouTube trailed behind with a 22% share followed by Facebook at 11%. Mixer only retained 2% with a small 81.4 million hours viewed.
Microsoft cited an inability to scale the platform "quickly and broadly" for partners and steamers. To get a better foothold in the industry, Microsoft is partnering with Facebook in a large joint effort to bring the two platforms closer together.
"Key to this vision is our Project xCloud technology, which we see delivering games to all kinds of screens and windows in your life, including those on Facebook," the company said. "We’re excited to explore further as we look to debut click-to-play scenarios within the Facebook Gaming and Instagram communities."
