The Xbox One is about to get a lot more social thanks to a supercharged Twitch experience. A March 11 Twitch update will bring a slew of new features including the ability to live stream video games and join a broadcasters’ party. You know, in case you would rather watch someone play a video game instead of actually playing it yourself.
This feature set on-ups the PS4′s Twitch integration where players can only spectate other PS4 games. According to an AP report, Sony and not Twitch, designed the Twitch integrations for its system.
Twitch is growing like mad. The service, which is centered around streaming live videos of people playing video games, sees on average one million broadcasters and 45 million viewers per month.
The Xbox One build-out will likely improve those numbers, too.
“It’s complete integration,” said Emmett Shear told the AP, co-founder and CEO of Twitch. “It’s exciting because we’ve never had the ability to broadcast from a console like this with such a deep level of integration. The concept of being able to join a broadcasters’ party is really cool, and it’s another step in the direction of interacting more closely with broadcasters.”
Following the update, the Xbox One will be able to live stream games, join broadcasters’ viewing sessions, initiate game broadcast through Kinect voice commands, store game clips and view any Twitch streams including those from rival systems like the PS4.
The update will also bring the ability to broadcast the gamer himself from the Kinect in a similar fashion found on the PS4.
“With Twitch streaming confirmed for release on Xbox One, a huge number of console owners are about to be introduced to game broadcasting and the Twitch community,” said Matthew DiPietro, VP of Marketing, Twitch, said in a released statement. “More than half the households in the US have a console, and those that do have them own an average of two. This puts Twitch in a staggering number of living rooms. The Twitch experience on Xbox One is easily the most feature-complete of our console integrations, and will hopefully turn on legions of gamers to the Twitch phenomenon.”
Look for this update to launch alongside the debut of Titanfall on March 11.
Source: TechCrunch
