BlueStacks TV goes live; integrates Twitch to enhance mobile game streaming

BENGALURU: Silicon Valley headquartered mobile company BlueStacks proved its ability to both stream and consume mobile gameplay inside its popular App Player. BlueStacks’ 130 million users of mobile games on PC witnessed BlueStacks TV go live. The company is the largest yet to integrate Twitch’s recently launched APIs. Twitch currently boasts 1.7 million broadcasters worldwide, mostly playing PC titles.

“This was a natural combination,” said BlueStacks CEO, Rosen Sharma. “BlueStacks has mobile equivalents of the most popular games on the Twitch platform, midcore RPG titles especially. It used to be hard to stream a mobile game. It involved multiple devices: a tablet, a webcam and wires. We’ve cut all of that out. From a PC it’s easy to stream. It’s why Twitch has become so popular so fast. BlueStacks users are already playing mobile games like Hearthstone, Castle Clash, Vainglory and others ─ we just built a bridge between our platforms. This combines the power of two huge user bases.”

Mobile developers and publishers also gain a large new distribution channel. “We’ve always known our mobile games look and sound awesome on PC, but streaming them from a phone is complicated,” said IGG SVP, Mark Zhang, developer of the popular Castle Clash title. “We’ve been approached to put an SDK in our games, but that’s bandwidth we don’t have. We’d rather focus on our games. The fact that millions of people can stream Castle Clash to Twitch without us doing anything is massive.”

The simplicity of BlueStacks' new broadcasting function is also a boon to streamers. “The simpler streaming becomes and the more games that are easy to stream, the better for the whole ecosystem,” said top Hearthstone streamer Aleksandr “Kolento” Malsh. “If I'm going to stream mobile games I don't want to change my PC setup. This lets people keep everything the same.”

To commemorate the launch of BlueStacks TV, the company hosted a 16-player tournament of top Hearthstone competitors using the mobile version of the game to stream live to Twitch. The tournament was single-elimination and the winner received $1000.

Based in with offices in Beijing, Delhi, London, Tokyo, Seoul and Ho Chih Minh City, BlueStacks is funded with 27M USD from Ignition Partners, Radar Partners, Andreessen-Horowitz, Samsung, Redpoint, Qualcomm, Intel, Presidio Ventures (a Sumitomo Corporation Company), Citrix, AMD and Helion Ventures. The 100-person company launched in May, 2011 and the first version of its App Player was released in March, 2012.