Yesterday, one of gaming’s biggest names announced his transition from Twitch, the platform on which he reportedly makes more than half a million dollars a month, to Microsoft-owned Mixer.
Via a promotional video announcing this move and a follow-up facecam video, Ninja offered his fans a vague, but perhaps telling, reason for the change.
Ninja, The World-Class Halo Pro
Although he’s now essentially known as the public face of Fortnite, Ninja’s true roots lie in his days as a competitive Halo player. As a Halo pro, Ninja played with several gaming franchises including Cloud9 and Team Liquid.
But what’s notable about this element of Ninja’s rise to success is that Microsoft is the publisher behind the Halo franchise. And, in spite of the fact that the release date for the forthcoming Halo Infinite is more than a year away, it already looks to be a major title. The game will be the sixth installment in the 18-year-old Halo franchise and will also be a launch title for Microsoft’s forthcoming Project Scarlet console, slated for fall 2020.
Long before venture capital firms were pouring money into the U.S. competitive gaming scene and before “Floss”-dancing children first introduced their confused parents to the word “eSports,” Halo players competed in illegal, underground tournaments for cash prizes.
In the four years since Halo 5: Guardians, there have been some dramatic changes in the gaming industry as a whole. Competitive gaming, once considered strictly a Korean phenomenon, is now a colossal multinational industry.
It would make sense to reason that Microsoft isn’t only betting on Ninja, but it’s also betting on Halo Infinite and competitive gaming as a whole.
As an aside, Ninja’s announcement video also features a fridge full of Red Bull, seemingly a nod to his partnership with the energy drink brand. Interestingly, a quick jump to Red Bull’s Mixer channel shows that the company’s most recent stream was a Red Bull Rise Til Dawn Halo 3 tournament.
In any case, it would be safe to wager that one method fans can expect Ninja to get back to his roots is by rebranding himself as captain of the Halo Infinite hype ship.
The Ninja Strategy: Outplaying The Competition
One can surmise that it’s tough to leave an audience that a player has cultivated through a single, specific game. Viewers who visit any popular streamer’s Twitch channel on a day that they’ve chosen to stream a title other than the one they’re best known for playing will frequently find the chat bombarded with channel followers and subscribers demanding they play that game.
Now, combine that with an over-saturation of Fortnite streamers on Twitch and it’s easy to see why it might be time to gamble on something new.
While Ninja is arguably still the most popular video game streamer in the overall public ethos, Fortnite streamers like Tfue and Dakotaz frequently pull in viewer numbers that compete with Ninja’s average daily viewership.
To be clear, Ninja probably doesn’t need the additional money or notoriety. As someone who reportedly made a million dollars to play a single video game for a day, the 28-year-old would have to have done something incredibly reckless if he’s making the move simply in an effort to sustain his lifestyle.
None of this is to say that Ninja will stop playing Fortnite. This past weekend, Ninja shared a tweet implying that he intends to grind the game to the point that he’ll be on the Fortnite World Cup stage as a competitor next year.
Love him or hate him, no one can deny the man works extremely hard. But streamer burnout is real. And, as someone for whom fame is ultimately simply a result of his passion for gaming, maybe being the subject of clickbait videos and harassment from 14-year-old trolls means now is the right time to try something new.
Ninja, Microsoft’s Own Master Chief?
It stands to reason that in the chess match of streaming platform success, seeding Halo Infinite exclusives through Ninja’s Mixer channel would not only bring an influx of Halo fans to the platform but could also allow him to cultivate an entirely new audience. In doing so, he’d no longer be tied to Fortnite, allowing him to leverage his status and influence to become Microsoft’s own Master Chief.
But as to what the change-up means for the future of his hair? Well, only time will tell for its trajectory.
