While some may find the idea of watching other people play video games to be the zenith of uselessness, the idea that this activity might be fun is catching on, and more and more people—and platforms—are turning to Twitch to watch the action, and to broadcast same. While PCs and consoles have been seen getting in on the fun—the Xbox One's Twitch capability is said to be ready for the launch of Titanfall—Twitch has recently been seen migrating to a new platform: mobile devices.
Recently Twitch saw some big success in its own right with a new milestone, reaching over 10 million total installations for iOS and Android devices. This may have been something of a prompt for Twitch, and subsequently, the company rolled out a new mobile software development kit, currently available through Twitch's developer program. But this is far from an industry first; mobile streaming has been on hand for some time thanks to Everyplay and Kamcord, among others, which offer gamers the ability to record and share gameplay on mobile devices.
This means that Twitch is going to have to start from scratch, and prove itself as technically adept as Everyplay and Kamcord. This may not be such a tall order—technological proficiency is often a matter of sufficient product testing—but if it can do the job, it's going to have a serious advantage. Not only will it be on par with the other offerings out there, but it will also have the advantage of sheer name recognition. There are 10 million installs and 45 million monthly unique viewers that know and understand the Twitch name. If Twitch can do the job, it may well be a matter of “Everyplay and Kamcord who?” for new users. Both are likely to keep current user counts, of course—Everyplay actually brought out word last month that said its tools would work with older Android versions---but with Twitch's name recognition it may be tough for Everyplay, Kamcord and the like to pull new users.
Some have wondered if this might be too much expansion too soon for Twitch, and that's not an invalid point. After all, we are talking about a company that's just seen some serious milestones and recently made the jump to consoles on a somewhat limited basis. It's entirely possible that Twitch is spreading itself too thin, though only time will tell if that's truly the case. But one thing is much clearer: Twitch is popular. Maintaining and expanding that popularity will require aggressive, if careful, expansion to ensure that the biggest audiences possible get their chance at the Twitch system. With more users, and more viewers, coming in, the demand for Twitch and the like is quite clearly there. But the question is, will the product be there to supply the demand?
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