Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Black Ops II now has embedded Twitch.tv streaming built in

The ability to stream Call of Duty Black Ops II straight to your Twitch.tv account is now possible. You will be able to stream yourself playing either League Play or Public Matchmaking. Activision worked closely with Twitch to use its SDK (Software Development Kit) to make the streaming service automatically available. It requires no additional hardware.

Gamers will only need to enter their Twitch.tv account information within Black Ops II menu to begin streaming to the Twitch.tv website and viewing apps. Twitch has a FAQ section which does state they recommend 3mbps (megabits per second, which is 3,000 kbps) upload speed from your ISP. You can determine what your upload speed is by going to SPEEDTEST.net. Gamers can also share their streams through various social media networks like Twitter and Facebook after you link them within the Black Ops II settings menu, allowing friends to easily tune into their gaming sessions. In addition to streaming gameplay, viewers will be able to check out additional information about broadcasters, including class loadouts, recent match statistics, as well as career statistics across all supported Call of Duty games on Call of Duty Elite.

The broadcasting capability will be available to Xbox gamers only at launch but Twitch expects the feature to soon come to PS3 and the desktop versions of the game. I was informed by twitter handle, @konaskorner, who does high quality streams of various games to Twitch, that the resolution is only 360p. In addition to the game video, users will be able to hook up headsets and xbox 360 compatible video cameras (the kinect for example) to capture their audio commentary or video reactions as they stream their multiplayer session to Twitch. Here is a short video created by an employee at Twitch who goes by the twitter handle @MrErnestLe


This is a very neat feature that will be built into Black Ops II but if you desire to provide your viewers with a better resolution than a mere 360p you'll be better off just getting a dedicated capture device and streaming through your computer. Are you excited for this new feature?

-Ubu out

No comments: