Twitchers watched 12 billion minutes a month in 2013

Streaming site Twitch has released a load of stats in its 2013 retrospective, including that last year its users watched on average 106 minutes of streams a day, and collectively racked up 12 billion minutes a month.

"When video game historians look back on gaming a decade from now, 2013 will be the year they cite as the tipping point of streaming," said VP of marketing Matthew DiPietro.

"Every major event, publisher, developer, and media outlet in the gaming industry had a presence on Twitch, and streaming became an ever-present piece of the gaming experience. And it's only going to get bigger."

The report also revealed that the inclusion of Twitch functionality in the latest consoles was having a major effect. A month after the launch of PlayStation 4 125,000 PlayStation gamers had used the service to share their gaming, becoming 10 per cent of the broadcaster total for the service. To date that has grown to 20 per cent.

The top four activities on Twitch are watching the live streams (99 per cent of users), chatting with the community (61 per cent of users), watching video highlights (38 per cent), and broadcasting content (25 per cent).

76 per cent of users are aged between 18 and 49, and the average age is 21. Over half, 58 per cent, spend more than 20 hours a week on Twitch, and 68 per cent say they now watch less TV as a result. Only a third now use more traditional gaming sites for news and reviews.

The service, which launched in 2011, now has more than 45 million unique viewers and 900,000 broadcasters sharing their content.