Almost a year ago at E3, we saw a Twitch logo amidst all the other companies bringing content to Xbox 360. Since then, the Justin.tv-owned video game broadcasting and chat community has been pretty quiet on when its streaming service will come to the platform. Now that silence has finally been broken with news that an Xbox application is coming today between 9AM and Noon PST.
The Twitch application on Xbox 360 has some of the same limitations as the mobile version of the website. The one that is the most contested by users is that it only lets them watch the top 300 streams on the service, which means that fans of particular smaller streamers will not be able to check out their favorites.
The blog post from Twitch specifically mentions the ability to browse by top channels, games and featured content, but it does not mention being able to search for something specific, which could definitely limit the core functionality of the game streaming service on Microsoft's platform.
Unsurprisingly, Twitch will require an Xbox Live Gold account in order to watch streamed games on the console. A little more surprising is the fact that this app will only work in the United States, which seems like a poor choice considering the exploding popularity of eSports in other parts of the world.
Kinect also comes into play with the release of this app, as users can use motion and voice to browse their favorite streamers on Twitch. While the use of Kinect as a game controller is not always as good as it could be, it works well for navigating around Netflix and other video apps, so that's likely the case with Twitch too.