TwitchCon 2016 has happened, and we tuned in – suffering though some awful singing and some exciting announcements – so you didn’t have to. Cutting straight through all the fat and to the juicy, juicy meat beneath, we’re bringing you all the stats, announcements and news, so you can greedily hoover it all up below. There was some really good stuff in there… after the singing.
Do you think anything on our upcoming PC games list will make a splash on the streaming platform?
TwitchCon 2016 Twitch Prime
Twitch Prime is a new set of Amazon Prime benefits created for people who watch and play games. A Twitch Prime membership comes with all the benefits of Amazon Prime: exclusive discounts, pre-order discounts, free and fast delivery on Amazon products, access to the Prime Video on-demand service along with Prime Music, early access to Amazon Lightning Deals and more.
Under the same $10.99 a month (or $99 a year) sub, you also get access to all the benefits of Twitch Prime: monthly game loot, inlcuding free games and a premium Twitch experience that gives you a free rolling sub to the Twitch channel of your choice. The streamer still gets paid, but from Twitch. There’s a 30-day trial over at the official site.
If you’re already an Amazon Prime member, you can get Twitch Prime* benefits at no additional cost by connecting your Twitch.tv account to your existing Amazon Prime account.
If you sign up by November 6, you get a new hero in Hearthstone, High Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind. You also get a free copy ofStreamLine, a parkour arena game made in collaboration with Twitch.
From now to October 5, every 100,000 subs Twitch gets, Amazon will send $100,000 to charity, up to $1 million.
TwitchCon 2016 Stats
Let’s have a look back on the year that was, shall we? The streaming service broke some records in 2016, clocking an average of 622,347 concurrent viewers at any one time. At its peak, there were2,061,718 viewers tuned in watching streams.
As for the streamers themselves, Twitch now has2,254,706 streamers, with just over 17,000 of them partnered with Twitch.
Over 10 billion Twitch messages sent in 2016 and Kappa is still the number one emote, with a 40% higher Kappa rate. In fact, there were 821 Kappas per minute. What are you doing with your life?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most popular new game to watch on the platform is Blizzards shooter, Overwatch.
TwitchCon 2016 Uploads
Twitch is taking on YouTube, bringing uploads into open beta. Though it’s still in development, streamers will be able to upload videos for people to watch at their convenience. Additionally, streamers can download old streams and reupload them to be watched again.
Upload videos directly to Twitch! Available RIGHT NOW as an open beta #TwitchCon
Read Now: https://t.co/CUKP2gHyjE pic.twitter.com/UR6sD4MueP
— Twitch (@Twitch) 30 September 2016
TwitchCon 2016 Curse App
As Twitch say it, the Curse app just got ‘Twitchified’. I want to die.
Twitch acquired Curse back in August, and since then both teams have been working towards building new experiences and making the brands make sense together. Because branding is important,Twitch purple is now on Curse. Simply select the options cog, choose purple, and it’s purple. Well done.
Additionally, syncing your Twitch account to Curse grants you immediate access to all of your Twitch emotes on Curse. While in the Curse App, head to the Account Sync page in settings and choose Twitch and you can fire out Kappas until the sun kills us all in one last fiery hurrah. There’s also aCurseLit emote.
TwitchCon 2016Transcodes
Starting from Monday, Twitch will roll out video quality options to more streamers, so viewers with all levels of internet speeds can view streams seamlessly. Video quality options will be automatically applied based on a channel’s expected viewership.
Over the coming months these options will be available to ten-times more streamers.
TwitchCon 2016 Loyalty Badges
Streamers will soon be able to award returning fans loyalty badges. These will be personalised – so probably only available for the bigger streamers – and will be able to be given to first-time viewers, three-months, six-months, twelve-months and twenty-four-months.
TwitchCon 2016 Clips
Clips are available now on mobile devices. As well as being able to create these on-the-go, you can also now choose exacty which segment you want, without the fluff. Using a simple editing tool, you can select a start and end point – on any device – and trim clips.
16 million clips have been saved in the last few months.
TwitchCon 2016 HTML 5
One of the most repeated requests Twitch get is for HTML 5 video, with viewers wanting to squeeze out as many frames as possible. That’s rolled out right now to all users.
No Emmett we won't stop tweeting about it!
HTML5 is now available to every single person on Twitch! #TwitchCon pic.twitter.com/PVs97zQPYd
— Twitch (@Twitch) 30 September 2016