YouTube is putting its money where its mouth with is and launching YouTube Gaming – the spearhead in its plans to challenge Twitch for the title of games-focused video king.

The new platform provides both live-streamed and archived content, and includes separate pages for over 25,000 games.

New waters

This is a brand new feature for YouTube, and means fans can scroll throw “Followed,” “Popular,” and “Let’s Play” videos centred on their favourite games.

Users also have access to their own customized feed of the gaming channels they choose to follow, and will be notified each time a new video goes up on that channel.

It’s the latest move in a competition between YouTube and Twitch that has been heating up since last year, when Amazon bought Twitch for $970 million in 2014.

With whispers that YouTube’s parent company Google was interested in buying the streaming service for itself, the launch of YouTube gaming looks to be its way of getting its own back and winning market share once and for all.