Twitch and Streamlabs have joined forces help streamers improve broadcasts from an Xbox, without the need for a capture card. The web-based Streamlabs Studio will allow streamers to customize their broadcasts with widgets and overlays, such as a chat panel or live stream alerts, making them more appealing visually and in terms of practicality.
“Live streaming gives viewers unprecedented access to their favorite creators. Real-time viewer engagement via chat and alerts create incredible shared experiences,” Streamlabs’ head of product, Ashray Urs, said in a statement. “In the past, creating professional broadcasts and engaging viewers from a console has been challenging. With Streamlabs Studio, you can transform console gameplay into a high-quality live stream production with viewer engagement tools to interact with your community.”
Typically, Twitch streamers who broadcast their Xbox console gameplay have had to jump through a series of hoops to do so. You have to run the video through a PC with the help of a capture card if you want to add onscreen donation alerts or custom layouts. Xbox owners can now select “Streamlabs” as a destination in the Twitch app and log into the Streamlabs Studio website to customize the stream. The site also works on mobile and tablets, so you don’t even need a PC to personalize your stream, or to switch between preset scenes.
All these features in Streamlabs aren’t free, however. Streamlabs Prime costs 5 USD p/m or 50 p/a. However, it does make streaming more accessible.
If you’re not willing to shell out, Microsoft is supposedly working on an option to make Xbox streaming easier.
