Twitch brings mobile game streaming to iOS, partners with Gameloft

From playing games to watching other people play them, things certainly have changed. The idea is so popular that a whole genre of Lets Play videos, where gamers record themselves just playing through games, was spawned and became immensely popular.

A lot of the credit belongs to Twitch, which on Monday announced that it will be bringing its gaming video streaming to iOS devices. The functionality is currently optimised for the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini with Retina display.

Earlier, you could only stream your games from PCs, and recently, Twitch was integrated into the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Impressively, iOS gamers will now be able to stream video of the game they're playing, and also use the camera and microphone on their iOS device to stream video (and audio) of themselves while playing. And the players will also be able to monitor chats that are happening as they stream, which sounds impressive, and is a strong demonstration of how powerful our iPads and iPhones have become as well.

Gameloft is the first partner with Twitch in adding this functionality, and its Asphalt 8: Airborne (review) is going to be the first game to integrate with Twitch. To demonstrate this, Gameloft hosted a 24-hour livestream of the game, which can be seen here. The Twitch integration can only be activated on a game by game basis though - unlike with a PS4 or an Xbox One, where Twitch is integrated at the console level, here, the developers will need to implement Twitch themselves.