Azubu’s new esports viewer offers higher resolution than Twitch

If you can’t compete with Twitch’s viewership, you can try to beat them with quality.

Esports streaming site Azubu announced a new HTML 5 viewer today: Everest. It enables viewers to watch 4K, 60 frames-per-second broadcasts of competitive gaming while using 80 percent less CPU than previous Azubu viewers. It doesn’t run on Flash, so you can watch Everest on mobile browsers like Safari, Android Web, and Chrome for Android. Esports are a growing market and could generate $463 million this year, and streaming services like Azubu and its competitor Twitch are a big part of that growth.

Twitch dominates the streaming market thanks to its over 100 million viewers a month, so competitors need to find ways to distinguish itself. Another broadcasting site, Hitbox, also introduced 4K streaming last year. 4K might seem like overkill to some people, but a lot viewers want to watch streams at the highest quality possible. PC gamers are typically more into high-end technology than their console brethern, and they usually have more 4K viewing devices (PC monitors and TVs).

“In the past, broadcasting live video across multiple platforms while maintaining high-resolution and frame rate consistency has been a serious challenge,” said Reed Anderson, the chief technology officer at Azubu, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “We set out to tackle this issue, as well as add many other features and enhancements to our new player. With Everest, I’m thrilled to say we’ve developed the most advanced esports video player in the world, giving broadcasters the tools to be both creative and optimize monetization, and viewers the most robust player available, completely tailored to the esports streaming experience.”

Everest also includes a DVR (digital video recorder) that allows viewers to capture moments from the streams they’re watching.