iOS 10 Jumps On Game Livestreaming Train With ReplayKit

Even before livestreaming news and events became a thing with the likes of Periscope and Meerkat, gamers have already been streaming their adventures and misadventures to a live audience for years. Doing that with PC games have relatively been easy. Mobile gaming, on the other hand, not so much. Trying to make gamers', as well as streaming services', lives a little easier, Apple is providing ReplayKit to put iOS gaming back on the map when it comes to game livestreaming.

In the absence of native support and API, third party tools and services have cropped up to fill in the gap. However, many of those had to use methods, like connecting to a PC, in order to work around limitations in mobile platforms. Last March, Google officially added a video recording API to its Google Play Services for Android. Now it's iOS' turn with the coming ReplayKit.

In a nutshell ReplayKit gives game developers an API to use for recording gameplay, either for live broadcasting or for later. Being a native platform feature, it has the advantage of being faster than workarounds and available on any device running iOS 10 or later. That said, alone, it won't really be able to do much, other than perhaps save gameplay footage for posterity.

The other half of the livestreaming equation is, of course, the livestreaming service. There are quite a few of those, but most of them for PC or console games. Twitch.tv and YouTube Gaming have added mobile recently, but as far as iOS 10 ReplayKit is concerned, Mobcrush is one of the first to shout support for the upcoming feature. Others are surely to follow suit once iOS 10 hits devices.

VIA: Mobcrush