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 this morning, 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.”
Broadcasting
- Instantly live broadcast your games by simply speaking “Xbox, Broadcast”, or launch from within the Twitch app for Xbox One.
- Position the webcam PIP in any corner of the screen to best fit your game.
- Interact with broadcasters using the most lines of chat available on a console.
- Your Xbox friends are notified when you go live.
Viewing and Chatting
- View live gameplay from any Twitch source: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC, PS4, etc.
- Get notifications when your favorite gamers are broadcasting so you never miss a minute.
- For Xbox One broadcasts, you can view the broadcaster’s Xbox Live profile and send them a party request and join their game.
- See which Xbox Live friends are broadcasting and what they’re broadcasting.
- Partake in the chat experience, including using your subscription-based emotes and chat badges.
- Turbo subscribers get an ad-free experience.
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.”
There’s Kinect support, of course. You’ll be able to start a broadcast by saying “Xbox, broadcast”. To stop, say “Xbox, stop broadcast”. What do you think? Here’s a list of Twitch app achievements.