Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins — the most popular streamer on Twitch — has signed an exclusivity deal to stream on Microsoft’s streaming platform, Mixer, as announced by the streamer on Twitter.
The next chapter,https://t.co/lvn9KBjEYq pic.twitter.com/tljVgyM3bG
— Ninja (@Ninja) August 1, 2019
For a guy who is pretty much the face of Twitch, having made millions of dollars from his gaming career on the platform, this is a radical curveball on his part to move to the comparatively minor-league Mixer.
In the announcement video, Ninja held a mock press conference where he addressed a room full of fake journalists, and said, ‘I know this may come as a shock to many of you, but, as of today, I will be streaming exclusively on Mixer.’
On Mixer, Ninja will be the ‘same me, just a different platform,’ he said. Presumably he will resume streaming Fortnite, as hinted by the Bushy (the fans’ name for the camouflaging item in Epic’s battle royale), and keep his pre-existing sponsorship deals, as we saw a fridge of Red Bull in the announcement video too. The announcement neatly coincides with the start of Season X for Fortnite, which should drive even more viewers towards Ninja and ergo towards Mixer.
He’s not alone, though. The director of the wonderfully memeable cult classic The Room, Tommy Wiseau, tweeted a link to his channel on Mixer afterwards, and not much else. There’s no information on when or what he plans to stream, but he received a warm welcome; people are already filling the offline chat with The Room references.
Mixer https://t.co/07TVgIYk2u
— Tommy Wiseau (@TommyWiseau) August 1, 2019
Mixer has nabbed a big name for its platform — well, two if you include Tommy — so this could give it the edge it needs to compete with Twitch and YouTube Gaming. Mixer is much smaller than the others, but it is rising in popularity; its hours-watched metric is up 357 per cent year-on-year. The terms of Ninja’s exclusivity deal were not disclosed, but it is certainly a bolt out of the blue (and pink) for the Twitch dominion.
