Twitch Integrates With Xbox One For Live Broadcasting And Viewing Of Video Game Streams

Today at its E3 press conference, Microsoft announced that it has integrated with live-streaming site Twitch to allow live streaming and viewing from its upcoming Xbox One game console. The integration will allow Xbox Gold Live customers to instantly broadcast their game streams to their own Twitch channels, as well as view the streams as others.

For Twitch, the partnership could massively increase the amount of content that will be available through its live-streaming platform. While it’s been working with a variety of game developers to make broadcasting from their games even easier, becoming a part of Xbox One will open that streaming capability to a number of new users.

Already, Twitch has more than 35 million unique viewers a month who watch about 1.5 hours of video play each day on average. Part of the reason for that viewership is that it has more than 600,000 unique broadcasters per month, of which 4,000 are part of the company’s partner program.

We can expect a huge number more broadcasters to join the platform as a result of the Xbox One integration, which will allow users to link their Xbox Live Gold membership with their Twitch accounts for one-click broadcasting. That will bring a whole lot more content onto the platform, which should help attract a whole lot more viewers.

The integration isn’t just for broadcasting — users will also be able to view those streams within the Xbox One. Tired of playing video games on your brand-new Xbox One? It’s okay, you can stream games from the pros.

Anyway, Twitch raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, along with Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Associates. The company, which is based in San Francisco, now has 80 full-time employees.