With a press release (via Joystiq), Gameloft today announced that an update to Asphalt 8: Airborne will be one of the first iOS games to support livestreaming through Twitch on iPhones and iPads.
Earlier this month, Twitch announced a mobile SDK to allow developers of smartphone and tablet games to add native broadcasting functionalities to their apps. By partnering with Twitch, Gameloft will showcase features enabled by the Twitch SDK in Asphalt 8, which include live streaming, stream archiving, as well as the possibility to capture player audio and video through the front-facing camera in real-time. In pre-release screenshots shared by Gameloft today, Twitch integration is shown as a separate screen with settings for stream quality (low, medium, high), video and audio capture, and chat logs; during gameplay, chat messages will be displayed at the bottom of the screen in an animated ticker, with picture-in-picture support for live broadcaster commentary. It’s possible that the more powerful CPU and GPU found in the latest iPhone and iPad models will be required to render this kind of video enhancements for iOS games in real-time.
Live broadcasting represents one of the most important shifts in the way people play games,“ said Matthew DiPietro, VP of Marketing, Twitch. ”Twitch has quickly found a home on consoles, so by partnering with Gameloft to launch the first streaming-enabled mobile game brings us one step closer to being everywhere that gamers are. Also, being integrated into Asphalt 8: Airborne, one of the highest rated mobile games, should ensure it resonates with our community.
Twitch integration in Asphalt 8 will also come with discovery features to let players browse other streams from the same game directly within the app, an interesting move that could increase usage of Twitch as a social platform for gamers and not just a video broadcasting service.
The third update to Asphalt 8 will be released “soon” according to Gameloft, and it’ll be optimized for the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini with Retina display. For the Game Developers Conference this week, Gameloft will host a 24-hour livestream on Twitch to showcase Twitch support in Asphalt 8.
