Twitch Goes Mobile With Gameloft's Asphalt 8
Twitch Interactive is making a big leap into mobile. On Monday, the company announced that Gameloft's iOS app Asphalt 8: Airborne will feature built-in support for the Twitch video platform, making it the first game to allow players to broadcast as they play on a phone or tablet.
San Francisco-based Twitch's platform allows users to watch live and recorded streams of video game tournaments, and to stream video of their own games and programs. It already has more than a million people using its platform to broadcast themselves playing on consoles and personal computers; just last week, the company added support for broadcasting from Microsoft's Xbox One. But until now it was impossible (or at least very difficult) for players to stream their game from a mobile device.
'This first-ever mobile game integration with Twitch opens the door for gamers to broadcast and share game play experiences like never before,' Baudouin Corman, VP of publishing for the Americas at Gameloft, said in a statement. 'As one of our most popular games, Asphalt 8: Airborne made perfect sense to integrate the Twitch mobile SDK.'
Asphalt 8: Airborne is a racing game where players compete against an A.I. or real world players. It has more than 48 million installs worldwide. The new Twitch functionality is currently optimized for Apple devices including the iPhone 5S, iPad Air and iPad Mini, and will be added to Asphalt 8 through a software update, which will be available soon on the App Store. The update also includes new events, cars and a redesigned user interface.
Gameloft says it will host a 24-hour live stream on its Twitch channel this week to show off all the game's streaming options, share interviews with the development team and answer questions from viewers.
Twitch Interactive has raised about $42 million in three investment rounds from companies including Draper Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners and Thrive Capital. In January, the company said it ended 2013 with more than 45 million unique monthly viewers who watched, on average, 106 minutes of video a day.
For more on the explosive success of Twitch, see my story from the December 2, 2013 issue of Forbes Magazine, The ESPN Of Video Games.
Learn about the most influential game of our time in my new book, Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google +.
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