YouTube has started testing out a gaming service called Playables, indicating that the video and music streaming giant is about to add games to its considerable roster.
We heard rumours of a YouTube gaming service back in June, with a Wall Street Journal report claiming that Google’s video service would be adding simple arcade-like games to its website.
Now those predictions have been confirmed, with YouTube adding a “Playables” gaming experience to its test features and experiments list. These Playables are described as “games that can be played directly on YouTube on both desktop and mobile devices”, which would seem to confirm that prediction of simple arcadey time wasters rather than triple-A experiences.
The “limited number” of YouTube users selected to take part in this experiment will apparently see a section called “Playables” directly on their YouTube home feed. Participants can also view and control their Playables history and saved game progress in the regular YouTube History menu.
There’s no information here on any of the games that will be playable for these early testers. The aforementioned report mentioned a game called “Stack Bounce”, which requires you to smash bricks with a bouncing ball.
That sounds just about as old school arcadey as it gets. It seems as if these games (or at least Stack Bounce) are made in HTML5.
If Playables eventually gets rolled out, it’ll be yet another string to YouTube’s ever-expanding bow. The Google-owned service has already added movie rentals, live TV broadcasts, and a fully fledged music streaming service to its baseline online video sharing provision. It kind of makes sense that some form of game streaming service would be next on the agenda.
