YouTube Gaming’s first head-to-head battle with Twitch gets it 8M views in 12 hours

YouTube’s gaming efforts got a shot in the arm at E3.

Google formally announced its gaming-focused streaming video platform just ahead of last week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, and kicked it off with a live show dedicated to the event on June 15. It has released some impressive viewer statistics from the debut this week, highlighting 8 million views of the YouTube Gaming live stream in just 12 hours on Monday. The success of this event will help YouTube build its presence in gaming as it attempts to go up against leading streaming game video platform Twitch, which sees 100 million monthly active users. Amazon paid $1 billion for Twitch late last year.