YouTube’s new playables feature tempts premium subscriptions

San Francisco: In an effort to lure users to subscribe to its paid Premium service, Google-owned YouTube is rolling out a new feature called Playables, which will let users play games directly on the platform.

Playables is a separate section of the YouTube app or desktop website that allows users to play arcade games without downloading anything, reports Gizmochina.

When users enter Playables, they will see two tabs — Home and Browse.

The Home tab shows a selection of popular titles as well as a list of recently played games. The Browse tab, on the other hand, has a larger selection of games, with around 37 currently available.

Popular titles such as Angry Birds Showdown, Brain Out, and Daily Solitaire are among the first games available on Playables. While the current library is small, more games are expected to be added in the future.

Playables is currently in beta testing and is only available to a select group of Premium subscribers. YouTube, on the other hand, plans to gradually expand access to Playables in the coming months, the report noted.

YouTube intends to continue offering Playables until March 28, 2024, at which point the company will evaluate its performance and make a decision on its future.

Meanwhile, YouTube has said it is testing new generative AI features that’ll let people create music tracks using just a text prompt or a simple hummed tune.

The company introduced Dream Track, an experiment on YouTube Shorts which is powered by Google DeepMind’s most advanced music generation model to date, Lyria.