Much as YouTube has made stars out of people with nothing but some creativity and a camera, Twitch gives gamers the opportunity to reach huge audiences with nothing but a webcam and a lot of gaming talent. So far, mobile gamers have been somewhat left in the dust, unless they wanted to hook up an expensive and cumbersome capture setup.
Lately, companies have been making strides in making streaming from mobile devices easier, and Sony is the latest company to leap into the fray. It has launched a new app simply called Live Screen Streaming, which allows users to stream to both Twitch and YouTube, the Xperia Blog reports.
Since the app is coming straight from Sony, it won’t work on just any phone. So far, Sony has confirmed that the app works on the Xperia Z3+, Xperia Z4, Xperia Z4v, and Xperia Z4 Tablet. Whether support for other Xperia devices will be added in the future is currently unclear.
“With the growing appeal of both mobile gaming and live streaming, the Twitch community is now prevalent on every major platform,” Twitch director of business development Brooke Van Dusen said in Sony’s announcement of the app. “By partnering with an innovator like Sony Mobile to enable the smartphone broadcasting of Android games on their Xperia devices, we are able to ensure our community has more avenues to embrace their passion.”
Installs of the Twitch mobile app, which allows users to watch Twitch streams but not broadcast their own, have reached nearly 35 million. Twitch doesn’t directly provide streaming tools for mobile devices, nor does it for any other platform, which is why Sony is providing its own app for that purpose.
“Partnering with Twitch to integrate live broadcasting directly in our latest flagship devices represents a fun, social experience for Xperia’s Android gamers,” Sony Mobile Communications’ Carl-Fredrik Mårtensson said. “Our users now have the capability to stream content, access and interact with the world’s leading gaming community directly from their device.”
While the focus is clearly on streaming games, the app can be used to stream anything on your screen. To try it out for yourselves, grab the app from the Google Play Store.
