Move over Kick, there may be a new challenger entering the arena to threaten Twitch‘s long-standing position atop the video game streaming platform mountain.
X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk recently discussed his vision for a Twitch competitors during a live stream of Musk playing Diablo 4, one that lasted for around 3 hours last week, while also talking about the future of his social media platform X.
Musk outlined his plans to share ad revenue with users while also talking about his future plans for his satellite internet provider Starlink, which is operated by another Musk-owned entity SpaceX.
“We’re just starting to add in video ads with a similar thing to YouTube where you can skip ahead after five seconds,” Musk said, according to Fortune (h/t Yahoo). “And we also want to reduce the amount of latency with the streaming.”
One of Musk’s viewers asked him about Starlink, to which Musk provided a detailed response.
“You actually take the any of the Starlink terminals around and have them be mobile, we will have a smaller size terminal around the middle of next year,” Musk said. “It’s a Starlink mini terminal, you can fit in a backpack.”
“We’ll have a lower cost terminal next year which will decrease the cost of Starlink,” Musk added.
Despite Musk’s success with companies such as SpaceX, his AI brand, and Tesla, Musk has not had the same success since his takeover of the Twitter social media platform. Musk acquired for $44 billion in 2022, but the platform has struggled to retain members, retain paying subscribers, and a recent advertiser boycott.
However, Musk views live-streaming as a way to attract advertisers and content creators to X.
“Any advertising that’s in your replies, so if you were to post a stream, any advertising that’s in the replies, you get all the previous… all the advertising revenue. So sometimes that can be quite a lot,” Musk said.
Whether or not streamers, gamers, or creators, flock to X is a major question. The platform seems incredibly out of touch with the streamer/creator generation and the array of spam bots, volatility, and fake accounts are enough to turn away most creators and social media influencers who they will likely target.
There is at least some curiosity, as Ninja, the most followed Twitch streamer, streamed on X back in November for an hour and a half. But while the platform may not have the financial resources to hand out fat contracts to creators, a 100% ad revenue take could be enough to generate interest, at the least.
“You can choose how much, but it’s like, I think one of the perks is like, you can even restrict the chat, or some of the chats, to be just subscribers. So then, you know, the advantage is that somebody subscribing then, they get to chat,” Musk said.
