I’m sure we’ve all been there. You’re playing a game, and you think, “If only I could broadcast my sweet Dr. Mario run online so everyone can see how great I am.” Well you might not have much longer to wait to make that a reality. YouTube announced at GDC 2013 that they’re making live streaming APIs available to all game developers. I hope we get a Battletoads channel so I can just watch people eat it in Turbo Tunnel all day long.
Sony announced a “Share” button for the PlayStation 4 that is designed to let gamers quickly share their gaming experience with friends, and YouTube has worked with Call of Duty in the past for live streaming, but now they’re handing over the technology to all comers.
Although this has the potential to offer a lot of great new features for game developers, I can’t really think of any that are particularly practical. I can almost hear Ian Malcolm saying, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
It’s unlikely that the ability to live stream video games is going to lead to an island overrun with dinosaurs, but it will be nice to know that if someone makes another Jurassic Park game we’ll all probably be able to broadcast ourselves playing it on YouTube.
(via SlashGear, image via Rego)
- YouTube also gave itself the ability to do the Harlem Shake
- GDC 2013 also gave us this bananas Metal Gear Solid V trailer
- It also spawned this Tumblr of devs wearing a GDC 2013 fedora
