Today Twitch TV have announced Twitch Turbo a way to watch games and no ads. Now while LagSpike TV is officially partnered with Twitch TV we feel this announcement is a bad way to go. Anyway let’s cover the press release first and then give you our breakdown as to why this is “Fail”.
“Today we’re excited to announce an all-new way to experience the Twitch content you love, seamlessly and without ads, all while still supporting your favorite broadcasters. It’s called Twitch Turbo, and for $8.99 per month you gain access to a number of exclusive features to enhance your Twitch experience:
Ad-free Twitch: No pre-rolls, no mid-rolls, no companions, no display ads, and broadcasters still get paid. All you see are front-page takeovers.
Exclusive Turbo Badge: A way to proudly show the community your passion for Twitch.
Custom emoticon set: A Choice between the standard set and an all-new set of emoticons to express digital emotions
Expanded chat colors: The ability to stand out from the crowd with Turbo-only chat colors.
Priority Customer Support: A way to get into the front of the line when you need help.
This is just the beginning of what we hope to offer through Twitch Turbo, and we’re looking forward to seeing exactly what sort of benefits and enhancements the community would like to see, from viewers to broadcasters and beyond.
Starting today around 9:00am PST, you can sign up for Twitch Turbo by visiting http://www.twitch.tv/products/turbo, and please feel free to share your thoughts below.”
While something like this was inevitable, why we call this fail is because it’s going to be taking away from the Partners A LOT while Twitch can argue it won’t be, we have yet to see any kind of statistics to show that this will help broadcasters who are partnered as you all know partners can run ad commercials for 30 seconds.
Incentives such as Custom Emoticons, chat colours are ok but one thing is your chat system is broken anyways and as a suggestion Twitch look at what Instagib TV does you can have these options for paying a small fee (details can be found on Mark Vaughn’s Channel Page).
As for Priority support, don’t make me laugh you rarely respond to forum posts, Twitter or Facebook so suddenly you’re going to have “Priority Support”? What did you do suddenly realise we need to listen to “Some” feedback. You’re a “big” company which should believe in more transparency and have a more creative, focus passion for making Twitch TV a better place for Broadcasters. Instead you’re going all over the place with various tasks and we’re often being left in the dark on any type of “progress”.
The idea behind you having to be registered on both Justin and Twitch to interact with either community is silly, you should have the ability to sign into both sites using one account and have the ability to stream on either site. Something once again Mark Vaughn has all figured all out so if your streaming a social event you can stream on Vaughn where as if you stream games you can stream on Instagib, while this require slight moderation its allows users to interact across both sites without having reregister.
So Twitch something you could learn from this is:
A) Be more transparent
B) Take on more feedback
C) Scrap the Turbo unless you provide more info on it!
D) Have more of a creative focus and passion for what you’re doing.