If you enjoy watching or broadcasting games using Twitch, you’ll be happy to hear the quickly-growing game streaming service is expanding it’s reach. Their COO has announced plans to develop apps to stream from portable devices such as 3DS and PS Vita.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, COO Kevin Lin spoke about their plans and the hurdles they have to get over in order to achieve their goal. The technology is more than ready to go, but their main concerns surround processing and server issues. Broadcasting apps are much more processor intensive than viewing apps, so they have to ensure that streaming will not jeopardize either the gaming or broadcasting experience on devices that may be already starved for memory or processing power. Processing concerns may be lower on smartphone and tablet platforms such as iOS and Android, so we may see games that support streaming on those platforms first.
The interview also enlightened us to other facts about Twitch that may not be that surprising to its users. Twitch is currently receiving 45 million unique visits every month with one million broadcasters. The average Twitch user is also reported to watch 106 minutes of video on Twitch a day, and during peak times they are the fourth biggest bandwith user in America. That’s a list in which they sit behind Netflix, Youtube and iTunes and sit above Facebook. With these new offerings, their growth surely shows no signs of stopping.
