In June, it was rumored that YouTube was internally testing a new product to bring online gaming to its platform. An email sent to Google employees invited them to participate in the testing phase of the YouTube offering, known as Playables. Today, Google officially announced that YouTube is testing playable games.
According to a new blog from Google, YouTube is venturing into games as its latest experimental offering. The platform is adding a new "Playables" section that will feature games that can be played on both desktop and mobile.
The game rollout is limited to a small number of YouTube users initially. One of the first titles is Stack Bounce, a 3D ball-bouncing game requiring well-timed clicks to smash through rings. Stack Bounce already exists on Google"s GameSnacks mini-game service.
Playables are games that can be played directly on YouTube on both desktop and mobile devices. If you"re part of this experiment, you"ll see a section on YouTube called "Playables" that will appear alongside other content on the home feed. You can view and control your Playables history and saved game progress in YouTube History.
Google says users can see if they have access to the new Playables game section by looking for it next to their standard YouTube video feeds. This addition of games to YouTube continues the platform"s expansion into many forms of entertainment, including short videos, full-length movies, music, television service, podcasts, and more.
Recently, YouTube has been testing a channel tab in the Subscriptions feed and humming-based song search. The latest report shows that YouTube is developing a new way to search for songs by humming or singing.
Meanwhile, Google discontinued its Stadia cloud gaming service in 2021. The company"s biggest gaming successes have come from one-off, playable Doodle games on its homepage. So, Google could gain more traction by surfacing games organically in YouTube feeds.