On January 5, 2016, what would become Mixer launched to the world as Beam. A streaming service that advertised itself on its robust interactivity and low latency. By August of the same year, Beam was purchased by Microsoft and renamed as Mixer by the following year. 2019 the service once again garnered attention with the poaching of many of Twitch’s top talent including Ninja, for between $20-30 million.
A year later, Microsoft announces they are shuttering the service and partnering with Facebook Gaming. A decision that is currently haunting Microsoft as it is met with near-universal condemnation.
Facebook. Really? pic.twitter.com/9JqUo0C5bs
— Ed Comment (@EdComment) June 22, 2020
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— Bit Alemaunzinhuu (@alemaunzinhuu) June 22, 2020
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Partnering with Facebook is a terrible look and terrible move.
— Justin Graham (@Hailinel) June 22, 2020
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I hope you don’t integrate facebook onto the Xbox Series X. I don’t want to give facebook a single byte of my personal data after we saw what Zuckerberg did with user’s data.
— Kevin Carreiro (@Tenkay23) June 22, 2020
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I hate Facebook and if I see anything remotely facebook forced on me as an xbox customer I will leave the platform.
— mark partridge (@WheatoMan) June 22, 2020
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There is a multitude of reasons why the deal is unpopular. Most common among complaints is concerning Facebook’s data harvesting practices that mine any interaction a user has with the platform or any of their subsidiaries. Pragmatically the youth just don’t use Facebook, resulting in the average age of the users being 40.5 in the United States.
Then there are the persisting issues of Facebook’s censorship. Along with their requirement for pages to pay money for advertisements or show up in feeds sporadically, and their blatant racial discrimination against whites and conservatives.
Microsoft’s partnership with Facebook is objectively poorly researched, and questionably thought out. Forcing the company to undergo damage control over the last couple of days. Major Nelson confirmed on Reddit Facebook gaming would not be fully integrated into the Xbox dashboard as Mixer previously was.
He also confirmed user’s personal information would not be shared with Facebook unless the user granted permission for the service to do so.
“If you are asking if the current Mixer integration in the dashboard is just going to become Facebook gaming. The answer is no.”
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“We certainly are not doing that now, and no plans to do that.
Edit: I got a few messages asking some questions. We are committed to respecting your privacy and personal information. Unless a Mixer streamer takes action to ask Microsoft to share data with a platform, no Mixer streamer personal information will be shared.”
If the streaming service isn’t going to be integrated in the same manner as Mixer, then what is the entire point of the arrangement, and how will the service be appropriately used for Xcloud integration?
Is Microsoft’s strategy going forward to be without Xcloud integrated streams as they have previously planned? Or are those statements intentionally misleading or false?
Alternatively, perhaps Microsoft is reconsidering their arrangement with Facebook, but that would be reading into the situation. Whether they are or not, Phil Spencer has confirmed Microsoft is open to allowing other streaming service apps to be integrated into the Xbox platform.
Yes, we absolutely want to give gamers choice of where to stream from Xbox.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 23, 2020
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Implementation of Xcloud support as part of application requirements would be the best path going forward for Microsoft. Right now, if you wish to stream from your Xbox, your options are to use the Twitch application or software such as OBS or Xsplit. Full integration of Facebook gaming if it comes at all does not appear as if it will be arriving anytime soon.
