The number one social video sharing website; YouTube has been putting a lot of stake in video live-streaming for quite some time now with Google+ Hangout integration, and a few other “live-streaming” websites it has made it very easy for video content creators to host live shows & interact live with their audiences on YouTube.
With that being said, YouTube has now brought live streaming to a whole new level – As you probably noticed Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has an option for YouTube live-streaming, and as awesome as the idea is it really does not work all that efficiently. Not to worry though, this week at the Game Developer Conference (GDC) YouTube has now officially announced a whole new set of programming APIs to make the process even easier and more efficient for game developers.
The new APIs will allow game developers to send YouTube a live stream of gaming content in video form and once received YouTube will then transcode the video in real time, providing the appropriate version for various YouTube users. This new functionality will not only be available for console game developers, but there will also be a version available for iOS, and Android game developers as well!
Now, unfortunately YouTube has not yet announced when this new feature will be available to the general YouTube public. As of right now it will only be available to content creators that YouTube has vetted. Now don’t lose hope yet – YouTube did say that they hope to be releasing these features to the rest of the YouTube public in the not-so-distant future!
So, after reading this article do you think that these new features will help YouTube greatly enhance their already rapidly growing viewership? Or do you think that they are putting to much effort in to something that is already well rounded? It almost arises the question, “Why fix something that isn’t broken”?
