Twitch Will Add IRL Channel and Mobile Broadcasting
- by Carmen Reese
- in Science
- — Dec 17, 2016
The section will allow broadcasters to communicate with their audience without the need to be playing a game, and it means broadcasters can do personal streams live from events such as PAX, without having to stand in front of a game.
Emmet Shear, the CEO of Twitch, stated that the new channel was the result of many requests made by streamers saying that they want to share more of their everyday lives, thoughts and activities with their communities.
Launching today is an all-new content category called IRL designed specifically to allow you to talk to your community and share your thoughts, opinions, feelings, and everyday life.
Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, said the category came about following feedback from its creator communities, who wanted more ways to interact with viewers outside of gameplay videos.
To accompany this new service, Twitch has also announced plans to update its Twitch mobile app so users will eventually be able to broadcast their IRL videos straight from their phone. "IRL is created to help our creators foster that kind of community interaction". Other recent endeavors include the launch of Twitch Creative which celebrates the creative process; a passion which first surfaced among gamers doing cosplay and game-related fan art.
Set for next year, a native streaming solution for mobile devices will be coming to the Twitch mobile app. Twitch claims the crown as the world's leading social video platform for gamers, with more than 100 million people using the service to watch and discuss play being streamed live or on-demand. Twitch's video platform is the backbone of both live and on-demand distribution for the entire video game ecosystem. To celebrate the launch of IRL, Twitch will be doing a livestreamed product announcement under the IRL category at 2:00pm PT today at twitch.tv/twitch_scar.
