Yesterday, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced that he would be leaving Twitch, moving his streaming career to Microsoft’s Mixer platform. This morning, mixer has risen to the top of the App Store’s free app lists.
Microsoft acquired Mixer in 2016, when it was called Beam, and has been trying to grow the platform ever since. However, Mixer has struggled with competition from industry leader Twitch, as well as other tech giants like Google (YouTube) and Facebook.
In fact, Mixer accounted for just three percent of game streaming viewing hours in the last quarter, according to StreamElements.
Microsoft had this to say about the Ninja move:
We are thrilled to welcome Ninja and his community to Mixer. Mixer is a place that was built around being positive and welcoming from day one, and we look forward to the energy that Ninja and his community will bring.
Ninja announced the news with a video, which did not offer much for reasons of the move. Microsoft most likely paid a penny for it, although that has not been officially confirmed.
In less than 24 hours, his new channel Mixer has amassed over 250,000 followers, and Mixer has reached the top of the app store charts.
It’s early for the change, but there’s still a long way to go to get back to the 14 million followers that Ninja enjoyed on Twitch.
