Twitch App Released on the Xbox 360!

Twitch.tv is a very popular online streaming website where you can view live streaming game play from gaming tournaments or individual players, and today they released an official app for the Xbox 360.

The app is very easy to navigate, and even has Kinect motion and voice support as well, although I have not been able to test how good that is due to not owning a Kinect.  One of my major gripes is that this app, just like the Android mobile version, has no way to search for a specific stream, and only sorts by the most popular streams online at the time.  You can sort by featured, by game, or by channel, but it will only list the top 50-100 streams in each category.  This means that if you happen to want to watch a streamer that has less than 300 viewers, you’re out of luck.

There is no way to log into your existing Twitch account, so there is no chat support, and no way to look up your followed channels.

Like other apps on the Xbox 360, you are required to have an Xbox Live Gold membership to be able to start any streams at all.  This is more of a personal gripe towards Microsoft as Twitch has no control over this, but it is still inconvenient for a lot of viewers.

Overall the app feels like it has fallen short for me.  I have been a long time viewer on Twitch, back from when all the channels were on Justin.tv, and I feel like the app could be better, given how much Twitch has grown as a company in the last few years.  Missing basic features such as a channel search is really a major oversight at this point.  They have been receiving negative feedback about their mobile apps not having this feature for months now.  At this point it seems like they are catering to their partnered streams that can run advertisements, and that’s why they allow you to browse and view the popular streams, and not the up and comers.  It makes sense from a business standpoint, but frustrating their viewers can’t be good for business either, can it?

You can get the app right now for free in the Xbox App Marketplace.  You can also check out the announcement on the Twitch.tv blog and view the released video below!