<div class="block">An internal email leak from YouTube revealed that streaming giant is testing out new gaming products. A new platform called &#39;Playables&#39; will be accessible through a web browser on devices that use Google&#39;s Android or Apples IOS operating systems.</div>

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YouTube Testing Out Gaming Platform

Many people go to youtube to watch videos, but the company may want people to think of it as a gaming destination. A Wall Street Journal report that youtube is internally testing an online gaming platform for more. Let's bring in Cheddar news, senior reporter Michelle Castillo. So Michelle tell us more about this youtube gaming platform. Well, Hanna, according to an internal email obtained by the Wall Street Journal, youtube asked its employees to try out playable, which is its name for its online gaming platform. Now, there were many games people could try out including the arcade game stack, bounce, playable could be accessible through a web browser or other devices that use Google's Android or Apple I OS operating systems. This isn't the first time Google has gotten on the gaming world. So during special times, you may remember the company often includes playable mini games that includes Pac Man. And my personal favorite was from Halloween 2022 which is called The Great Google Duel, which allowed up to seven players to chase each other around haunted houses and collect spirit flames. Google is also dabbled in a cloud gaming service called Google Stadia, but that was shut down in January of this year, youtube in particular has been a big draw for gamers. According to Google, more than 200 million people watch gaming content on the platform each day. And there's over 1000 channels on youtube that have over 1 million subscribers. I did speak to youtube earlier today. They did say that gaming has always been a part of their DNA. They don't have anything to announce. They do test out features like this quite often. And Michelle you know this as well as I do youtube already dominates online video. So why go in any further, why get into gaming in the first place? Well, Hannah, many of us already play games on our phones and computers and youtube seems to want to get in on that action. So there's about 354.9 million Americans who play digital games each month on their phones, computers or a device that is reliant on the internet. So I think streaming game video consoles and that's according to insider intelligence, mobile gaming makes up the biggest portion of that segment with 165.3 million monthly players. And those numbers they're only expected to grow. This industry is extremely lucrative price. Waterhouse Coopers believes the gaming industry is gonna be worth $321 billion in 2026. And the majority of that revenue that's gonna come from mobile gaming. So the accounting firm believes the boom is due to people picking up gaming during the pandemic to get rid of boredom and they're still continuing to play today. And it's not just hard core competitive gamers. The biggest boom is really among the casual gamer who would be more likely to use a product like youtube's potential playable. There's also been a notable slowdown in advertising as companies brace for an economic slowdown. So I spoke to PWC recently and they also mentioned one area of growth they see still going up is video game advertising. So you could see youtube potentially chasing money opportunities while other categories in advertising go uh a little bit more quiet. And if you think about it, advertising in Google and youtube's parent companies out of its biggest source of revenue, youtube last quarter made $6.69 billion alone from advertising.