Activision today officially announced the live-streaming feature of Call of Duty: Black Ops II. The feature will allow players to live-stream their gameplay directly to YouTube from the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 consoles. It will also allow the streaming of the player webcams and audio commentary during gameplay (oh, boy…).
The live-streaming will be heavily integrated into the newly free Call of Duty Elite service, allowing players to see the player cards and stats for those streaming. The live-streams will also be broadcast via Call of Duty Elite, in addition to individual YouTube user channels.
“From the beginning of development with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the team has been pushing boundaries on every front to offer Call of Duty fans things that they haven’t been able to do before,” said Mark Lamia, studio head of Treyarch. “With our competitive play and eSports initiatives, we wanted to deliver live streaming capabilities built right into Call of Duty: Black Ops II, because Call of Duty is not only fun and exciting to play, but we believe it will be just as exciting to watch. By making the capability of live streaming as accessible as possible to our fans, straight from a player’s console without the need for any additional hardware or sophisticated setups, we are empowering our fans to share their multiplayer experiences.”
Activision stated that the live-stream capabilities will be subject to “limitation and restrictions,” but didn’t go into detail. Players will, obviously, need a YouTube account to live-stream, and it will need to be verified.
This is a feature that was sorely needed for many videogames, and it seems that Activision and Treyarch have delivered. This and many other features have made the Call of Duty franchise the most popular multiplayer first person shooting experience in gaming. It’s so popular that Microsoft is practically paying gamers to stick with Halo 4 multiplayer. Call of Duty: Black Ops II launches on November 13 and is expected to be one of the best-selling games of all-time.