Some big news for fans of both Black Ops II and Twitch.Tv. Today, Twitch announced a very awesome partnership with Activision that will allow for one-click streaming integration. The ability to stream live gameplay directly to a Twitch channel will work for windows-based PCs, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 as well. Additionally, the update will also allow for the streaming of a webcam or audio commentary alongside the game. Umm… please and thank you!
In case you don’t know, Twitch is the major leading streaming service for esports (the competitive gaming scene.) The service currently boasts over 300,000 unique broadcasters, and served up over 33 million hours of viewership in December 2012 alone, although a great many of those seem to exclusively stream League of Legends or Starcraft II, so giving the huge market an injection like Call of Duty should help bring a different audience to the forefront.
This is not only great news for CoD fans who enjoy watching matches, but the gaming community in general. Twitch is a fantastic streaming application, one I personally use for all my pro gaming fixes including the SoCal fighting tournaments. If developers see this take off, hopefully more games will feature instant-streaming capabilities. This is probably something we’ll see a lot more of come next generation of consoles, but this integration would certainly make it easier for folks who’ve always wanted to host “Let’s Play” videos but didn’t have the technological means. Not to mention the benefits of being able to do live, release day video reviews with overlaying commentary.
There is currently no official date for when the update will take effect, but expect it sometime in the near future.
(Editor’s Note: Twitch integration is now live on Xbox 360 and PS3, but not yet for PC folks. Twitch has also provided an official video on YouTube on how to get started.)
Is this something you folks are excited about? Or is Twitch still a mysterious unknown to the general gaming audience? How best could we take advantage of the ability to live stream gameplay?
