The past year or two has seen the rise of video game streaming in a big way. Let’s Play videos are all the rage, League of Legends tournament broadcasts are like prime time network television, and we’ve seen a lot of traction in streaming mobile games on our own Twitch.tv channel. Originally, it was something that was more readily accessible to PC gamers, but the latest home consoles have streaming functionality baked right in, and today Twitch has announced that they’ve released a software development kit which will bake the functionality right into mobile devices as well.
The Twitch Mobile SDK will allow live broadcasting, capturing and archiving of your mobile gaming exploits. It’ll also offer options like front-facing camera video capture, audio capture, chat support and the ability to archive your videos straight into Twitch for viewing in the TwitchTV app (Free) or for sharing via social means. The announcement of the Twitch Mobile SDK comes on the heels of Twitch reaching 10 million installs of the TwitchTV mobile viewing app, a number which is spread out evenly across iOS and Android users.
Twitch’s new initiative on mobile devices rivals similar offerings from companies like EveryPlay and Kamcord, which don’t offer direct streaming but have become quite popular for capturing clips of mobile gameplay and sharing them with a broader audience. Twitch is a major player though, basically owning the world of gameplay streaming on consoles and computers, so it will be interesting to see how these competitors will fare now that Twitch is entering into the mobile arena.
If you’re a developer, you can find out more about integrating the Twitch Mobile SDK into your mobile software by visiting the Twitch developer portal. There is also more information available on the Twitch blog. I for one and looking forward to a future of Let’s Play videos broadcast straight from the porcelain throne.
