Microsoft renames its Twitch-rival as it launches impressive co-streaming feature

By Jon Porter

Beam is dead, long live ‘Mixer’ – the new name for Microsoft’s live-streaming service to rival the likes of Twitch and YouTube gaming.

According to the company, the new name marks the next generation of the service, but for many it will feel like a sign that the service has been struggling to make headways against the dominance of Twitch despite it’s recent arrival onto the Xbox One platform as part of the Creators Update.

It’s a struggle that will be familiar to many fledgling services who’ve gone up against an established community. Mixer might have some pretty impressive tech, but when the draw of a service is its diehard fanbase, it nevertheless has a hard road ahead of it.

The next level in multiplayer streaming

And that’s a shame, because Mixer’s new co-streaming functionality is genuinely pretty cool. The feature allows up to four streamers to group together to offer a new take on multiplayer streaming.

Using co-streaming, for example, a team of players in the multiplayer game PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds could all stream simultaneously. Viewers can then easily keep track of multiple players, switching between them to view the best bits of the action from each of their machines …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Gaming