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Facebook is planning to launch its Facebook Gaming mobile app today, April 20, according to a media report.
The social media giant will be launching a free casual gaming app owing to a surge in demand in light of global shutdowns.
The app was initially slated for release in June. However, the launch has been preponed owing to growing demand. Fidji Simo, head of the Facebook app had said that investing in gaming has been a priority for the tech giant as gaming was a medium of entertainment that “connects people,” the report said.
The free app is the result of the social media giant’s huge investments in gaming as 700 million of its 2.5 billion monthly users are actively engaged in gaming content, the report said.
The app is designed to help gamers engage in various online games and live stream their gaming. The app will have a function called Go Live. The Go Live feature will let users upload videos and live streams of other mobile games on their device, it said.
Despite having 700 million monthly active users actively engaged in gaming content, the social media major is far behind gaming content giants YouTube and Twitch in terms of gameplay watched.
Facebook Gaming witnessed a 210 per cent increase in the number of hours of gameplay watched between December 2018 and December 2019 according to a report by software firm StreamElements.
However, Twitch still dominated the market with 61 per cent of hours watched in December 2019 while YouTube had a market share of 28 per cent.
Facebook has been testing its gaming app in Southeast Asia and Latin America for the past 18 months. It initially plans to roll out the app n Android devices on the Google Play Store. It will be rolling out an iOS version of the app as soon as the app gets approval of the same from Apple as per the report
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