Microsoft has announced that they have acquired Beam Interactive, a company that focuses on interactive game streaming. The platform is set up similarly to Twitch and YouTube, where viewers can watch their favorite creators stream their gameplay sessions. However, it adds in the ability for viewers to interact with the game and the streamer, presenting them with challenges, or altering the game in some ways.
As of now the acquisition isn’t being presented as a world changing event, but one can see how this might impact both PC and Xbox One gaming. Twitch has already become a big part of the Xbox One gaming environment, and adding in Beam Interactive will really shake this up in a lot of big ways.
And the acquisition doesn’t seem to be limiting the ways in which users can use Beam. “One of the best parts about Beam is that interactivity is easy for streamers to enable and customize, regardless of the game or platform,” reads the announcement. “Beam is designed to work with any game, and will continue to offer broadcasts across all gaming platforms, just as it does today. Beam remains committed to its mission of empowering users and streamers across platforms and will now be better positioned to grow and give more back to the community.”
What Microsoft offers to Beam seems to be both funding and the ability to take some bigger risks. Beam CEO Matt Salsamendi talked about the acquisition and how it has allowed them to expand their team and build up their infrastructure. We’ll have to wait and see how this new piece of tech will really impact gamers as a whole.
