Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the biggest name in Fortnite and one of Twitch’s most popular stars, is leaving the platform to stream exclusively on Mixer and this was a major win for Microsoft’s streaming service Mixer as it shot to the top of the App Store’s free app charts.
The news comes via a tweet from the streaming star, with him dubbing the move “the next chapter.” Mixer is a fledgling streaming service owned by Microsoft that launched as Beam back in 2016, and later rebranded in 2017. However, Mixer has had a tough go of it with competition from the industry leader, Twitch, as well as other tech giants like Google (YouTube) and Facebook.
The Ninja exclusivity marks a major get for the platform, which has struggled to catch up to competitors like Twitch and YouTube.
“I have been holding on to this for quite some time,” Ninja said in a brief follow-up video, “and I’m just super excited to let everyone know. I’ll be streaming on Mixer full-time now and I’m honestly at a loss for words. I’m freaking out in the best ways. I feel like I’m going to get back to the streaming roots.” He goes on to say that his streams will be “the exact same,” so don’t expect Ninja to get away from Fortnite any time soon.
In fact, Mixer represented just three percent of game streaming viewership hours in the last quarter, according to StreamElements.
Microsoft had this to say about Ninja’s move:
We’re thrilled to welcome Ninja and his community to Mixer. Mixer is a place that was formed around being positive and welcoming from day one, and we look forward to the energy Ninja and his community will bring.
Ninja announced the news with a video, which didn’t offer much by way of reasons for the move. It’s highly likely that Microsoft paid a pretty penny for it, though that hasn’t been officially confirmed.
In less than 24 hours, his new Mixer channel has picked up more than 250K followers, and Mixer has risen to the top of the App Store charts.
It’s early days for the switch, but it’s still a long way to go to get back to the 14 million followers Ninja enjoyed on Twitch.
