As of 11th March, the Xbox One’s Twitch app will finally support livestreaming. What’s more, it’ll allow you to join a broadcaster’s Xbox Live party while watching their stream.
Livestreaming was originally planned for launch, but was delayed “to ensure that the Twitch broadcasting experience meets all of your expectations”. Microsoft and Twitch now claim that the Xbox One Twitch app is the most “complete” you’ll find on a console.
“It’s complete integration,” Twitch CEO Emmett Shear told the Associated Press as reported by Gamasutra.”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.”
To whisk the hood off the elephant in this (chat)room, the PS4’s Twitch app has supported livestreaming since launch. It doesn’t allow you to join the broadcaster’s party, however. “That’s a very certain type of experience,” Xbox vice president of marketing and strategy Yusuf Mehdi observed of Sony’s offering. “For us, we thought that was too limiting for what our fans would want. Our fans really want the full next-gen service, so that’s why we decided to take our time, do it right and have it come out in this fashion.”
“This will open up the social aspect of Xbox One in a new way,” he added. “The community of Twitch is huge, and this allows us to type into that, and frankly do something that’s never been done before on consoles. You’ll be able to broadcast to any device and consume anyone’s broadcast from any device. It’s a console experience unique to the Xbox One.”
