Microsoft nixes Mixer, partners with Facebook Gaming

In a confusing set of press releases, Microsoft and Facebook announced that Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and moving the Mixer community over to FB Gaming. After July 22, Mixer.com will redirect to fb.gg.

FB Gaming is the fastest growing livestreaming platform right now (vs. Twitch and YouTube Gaming), but Mixer has not grown much at all, even after paying $30M to sign Ninja as a Mixer streamer.

This article from The Verge has a bit more color on what’s happening here. Basically, the bigger opportunity for Microsoft is their game streaming service xCloud. So they would rather partner with FB Gaming to reach a larger audience and make money on xCloud rather than livestreaming.

It’s an interesting strategy and a bit counter to what Microsoft has done with LinkedIn and Github, where they acquired a community in order to build and sell more products. Of course, each of those was an independent company, so we’ll see how this Big Tech partnership works.

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