The beta access to Origin's new twitch.tv integration has been released today and of course I was very excited to test it out. On top of that, you can now add non-Origin games to the client and yes, you can actually add the Steam client into Origin! This also means that you can pretty much stream any game, whether you got them via Origin or not, as long as they are compatible with the Origin overlay because not all of them are. unfortunately, at this time.
No, you are not dreaming. That's a Steam client inside the Origin client.
Streaming your game is ridiculously easy. First, you have to link up the Origin and twitch.tv accounts. You want to make sure to check out the stream setting for the proper resolution and frame rate and then just click on the stream icon from the in-game Origin overlay and you're good to go. The Origin is definitely the most convenient way to stream games but does it even work properly? I am happy to report that on my Personal Computer, streaming up to 1280 x 720 resolution at 30 frames per second resulted in no performance drop in-game. Pushing the streaming resolution to 1080p did result in slight fps drops however. The actual video that you are streaming is certainly not the best looking one out there with noticeable pixelation and occassional blocky decoding but remember that you are getting this feature for free. Currently, there doesn't seem to be a way to tweak the image quality beyond the resolution and frame rate so you are stuck with what you are given even if your PC is capable of streaming at a higher bit rate. I have a feeling that with time, the streaming feature will continue to get better. [Update Note: 11/15/2012, 10:20pm - and just one day later, EA has provided us with the ability to adjust the picture quality from "Lowest" to "Mid" to "Highest" with that last setting looking pretty darn good!] To make things more engaging, there is even a mic function built into the streaming so you can chat away during your broadcast.
You can see how many people are viewing your stream at the top of the screen.
Yes, apparently, I am very popular on twitch.tv!
The ability to stream gameplay straight to twitch.tv from the Origin client is a smart way to convince gamers to try out the service. I do plan on using it extensively so this will force me to have both clients up and running on my PC. It's too bad that when you added a non-Origin game to the client, you can't customize the game's icon. You would think that Electronic Arts were aware of the grid customization feature found on Steam but I have a feeling that they were just being a tad lazy. Origin is not even close to dethroning Steam as the king of PC digital distribution but today surely marks its turning point in the industry. The streaming and game add-on features will go live soon but why wait to try it out? Opt for the beta client and stream your favorite games via Origin ASAP!
Update Note: 11/15/2012, 10:30am - You can just launch Steam from Origin and then launch any of the games you have added to Steam, whether they are native Steam games or otherwise, to stream them using Origin. Doing this will save you the effort of having to add those games individually to Origin.
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