Microsoft only did 10 acquisitions last year, but some of them such as LinkedIn and Xamarin have already started to pay off. The same can be said for Beam, the live streaming video platform that was officially rebranded to Mixer yesterday.
Beam was acquired by Microsoft in August 2016, and in less than 12 months the service has already become deeply integrated into Windows 10 and the Xbox One OS. Microsoft really wasted no time to leverage the many talents looking to revolutionize streaming, and the Mixer team made several big announcements yesterday, such as as a new co-streaming feature and an exciting Mixer Create mobile app.
It will probably take some time for the Twitch competitor to build a massive userbase, but you can count on the Mixer team to iterate fast and keep introducing several new features this year. Actually, the team is being quite transparent about what to expect in the near future, and you can find below the full list of what is is currently in the pipeline:
- Dynamic Stream Recaps
- Sub Anniversary Announcements
- Channel Editors
- Scheduled Live Streams
- Team Based Interactive Games
- Voice Chat Commands
- Co-Streaming
- AV1 Stream Encoding
- Private Messaging
- Group Messages
- Moderator Permission Editor
- Channel Moderation Logs
- Built-in Donations
- Theater Mode
- VOD Chat Replay
- Console Apps
Co-streaming actually started to roll out yesterday, but we’re pretty excited about Dynamic Stream Recaps, Private Messaging and Built-in Donations. Overall, many of these new features will help to grow the Mixer user base, and it’s interesting to see that the service will soon come to other consoles.
In fact, this is probably why Microsoft chose to let Mixer exist as a standalone platform instead of completely integrating it into Xbox Live. And if Mixer is mainly focused on gaming right now, the team is also looking to create a solid selection of non-gaming categories such as podcasting, DJing and even cooking. In the end, Microsoft may well see Mixer not as Twitch competitor but as a true YouTube competitor.