Xbox snaps up interactive streaming tech, name drops Minecraft, Sea of Thieves

Xbox games may one day support interactive streaming, in case your Twitch chat is not nightmarish enough already.

Microsoft has signed up to acquire Beam, "an innovative and interactive livestreaming service that gives viewers the ability to watch and play along with their favorite game streamers in real-time", for Team Xbox.

What does that mean? It means that livestream viewers will be able to interact with the stream in both subtle and meaningful ways. The examples Microsoft gave were switching between player perspectives in Sea of Thieves (sure, whatever) or spawning items and setting challenges in Minecraft (a bit more dramatic).

"Impossible!" You splutter. "Surely if such technology existed everyone would put it in their games and Telltale's Crowd Play would work with Twitch and other streaming services I definitely remember right now because the market is not utterly dominated by one brand at all!"

Nah though - it's not science fiction. Both Rise of the Tomb Raider and indie horror Daylight had interesting Twitch chat interaction, so it's clearly possible.

I'm too old to enjoy streaming (get off my lawn, etc) but it's clearly one of the most important realms in modern gaming, so this is exciting news for Microsoft. It's nice to see Team Xbox climbing aboard the social bandwagon Sony and the PS4 ran away with this generation (dat Share button); let's see how badly it gets messed up by Microsoft's obsession with OneDrive and gatekeeping.