Microsoft's Beam 2 Streaming Service Is Now Live, Brings Major Redesign With HTML5 Support

For the past few days, Microsoft has been making a number of announcements for its gaming platform, both on Xbox and Windows 10 PC. Last week on Friday, Microsoft detailed its plans to induce a complete overhaul to its Xbox One dashboard, introduce a 'Game Mode' on Windows 10 PC, an complete integration of Beam into Xbox One and Windows 10. Finally, Microsoft has released the new and improved Beam 2 out of the testing period, and it's available for everyone to use.

Microsoft had in 2016 acquired Beam, a streaming video platform that focuses on video gaming, including playthroughs of video games, and allows viewers to interact with the streams. "We are building Beam as a feature of Xbox One and Windows 10, making Beam one of the easiest and quickest ways to stream your gameplay," Mike Ybarra, head of Platform Engineering for Xbox, said in a statement. This has now been confirmed in a tweet posted by Matt Salsamendi, who leads the Beam division at Microsoft. However, an official announcement is expected to happen later.

Beam now has multiple new features along with an entirely changes homepage with multiple streams and channels. You will be able to use your Xbox Live account to sign into Beam, while still using other sign-in options. But, that will change later when Microsoft will make it compulsory to use the Xbox account for Beam. Other features to arrive on the platform are two-factor authentication, moderation, and more.

In addition, Beam 2 now supports HTML5 player to stream gaming videos at a higher resolution and bitrate, along with better video-on-demand (VOD) controls. The new Beam website is said to load up to 5 times faster than before, with better visual experience on mobile platform. The chat experience has been rebuilt afresh with auto-completion. While the new look is live now, the Xbox One support and new mobile apps will be pushed later this year. Users who use the XSplit app should rejoice as the XSplit 2.9 beta update has been rolled out that adds the support for FTL streaming capabilities.

You will still be able to go back to the previous version of Beam under the Account settings, in case you get into some trouble loading a feature on the website. Notably, Microsoft had recently shown its new Xbox One Guide with new features and design. It has also added 'Game Mode' for Windows 10 PC where gaming experiences will improve with better speed and performance for Xbox users.