Google may have lost Twitch.tv to Amazon, but it still wants in on the live-streaming gaming market. The company has announced that YouTube live streaming now supports 60 FPS 1080p and 720p video streams. This brings YouTube streaming up to parity with Twitch, but YouTube one-ups Amazon's streaming service with HTML5 playback—Twitch still uses Flash.

We've heard rumors of YouTube moving into the live stream gaming market, and this is the strongest sign yet that Google is planning to take on Twitch. 60 FPS content is primarily video games, and the post touts the feature as great for "silky smooth playback for gaming." The company has even worked with popular game-streaming software companies, like Elgato and XSplit, on getting 60 FPS YouTube support up and running. YouTube also says that "any app using our live streaming API can add a new high frame rate flag to enable 60fps streaming."

The HTML5 player will not only save users from the CPU and battery-eating Flash player, but will also enable variable speed playback, allowing users to "skip backward in a stream while it’s live and watch at 1.5x or 2x speed to catch back up."

We've also gotten word that this change won't affect YouTube's streaming latency significantly, and that YouTube is "working to bring latency down and [is] making good progress." Currently we estimate there is about 30-60 seconds of lag time on YouTube's platform, which makes the streamer's interactions with chat a little awkward.

For now, 60 FPS live-stream viewing is limited to the desktop site, but more platforms will be supported "in the coming weeks." Google promises that YouTube has "plenty left to come" when it comes to live-stream features and asks us to "stay tuned for more very soon."