Xbox One Twitch App Enhanced With VOD, New Filters, And More

Microsoft and Twitch announced a significant update Tuesday to the Xbox One Twitch that will help viewers discover live streams of their favorite games plus other new features. The app is also the first to receive Video on Demand (VOD) outside of the Twitch website.

The Twitch app homepage has been re-designed to put the channels and games you follow up front. The ability to follow specific games is one of the new features with the update and will allow users to quickly access the Xbox One game they want to watch and discover livestreams by filtering based on certain criteria.

All Xbox games will support the new advanced filters at launch. Each title will have what is being called “Hero Stats” to narrow down the type of live stream you are searching for based on actual in-game activity.

Here are some of the examples that Twitch provided in a FAQ. And no, these kinds of filters are not currently available for the PS4, PC, or other platforms.

• Find the best Call of Duty player currently broadcasting by sorting by their K/D Ratio.
• Find the GTA V broadcaster most likely to cause mayhem by sorting by the number of Stars accumulated over the course of the game.
• Find the best FIFA or Madden players by the number of matches won.
• Find live broadcasters who are currently riding a hog by filtering by activity.

Video on Demand is being handled a bit differently. Twitch will be adding access to VOD from different channels throughout 2015 until all broadcasters are available. As mentioned above, the Xbox One app is the first to receive these Twitch VOD. There are updates coming to allow iOS and Android apps to view them in 2015. There was no mention of the PS4, however.

While there were no updates to the Twitch broadcast feature, there was one simple and powerful new feature mentioned in the official video from Microsoft’s Major Nelson above, but not in the official Microsoft or Twitch announcement. It is the ability to manually select the quality of the screen. This will allow users to select the source quality of 1080p if they wish. They will just need to make sure that their internet connection can handle it.

“Xbox One helped cement Twitch’s place in the living room with its robust set of features,” said Annie Berrones, Twitch’s Director of Product Marketing. “With this impressive set of updates, including the ability to now follow the games you want, view archived videos and have access to more advanced directories, video game streaming and spectating as part of the home entertainment experience is only going to get stronger.”

These kinds of updates from Twitch should help keep it as the dominant streaming service for games. Valve recently announced a Steam streaming service, but it has a long way to go to catch up on features.

What do you think of these new Twitch features for the Xbox One? Sound off in the comments below.

[Images via Twitch]