Elon Musk plays 54 minutes of Diablo IV live to test out new game streaming feature coming soon on X

Elon Musk is exploring new video features, such as game streaming and live shopping, in his efforts to transform X into a comprehensive "all-in-one" app. The company, formerly known as Twitter, is currently testing basic game streaming functionality similar to Twitch, which is exclusively available to X Premium subscribers.

Musk unveiled this feature on Sunday night during a 54-minute Diablo IV stream, which was shared from an anonymous Twitter account with the handle @cyb3rgam3r420. Musk later confirmed the company's testing of this feature in a reply to the account. Mark Kalman, an engineer at X, also shared a video guide explaining how Premium subscribers can set up game streaming by connecting Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to their Twitter accounts through X Media Studio.

It remains uncertain how committed X is to attracting streamers, as the feature currently lacks many creator-oriented functions found on other platforms. Nevertheless, it underscores X's recent focus on creators and new video features to entice more users to the platform. Additionally, the company has announced its intent to experiment with live shopping features through a partnership with Paris Hilton. Variety reports that Hilton will produce four original video content programs per year, incorporating live-shopping elements.

There are concerns about whether X's infrastructure can handle the demands of these new live video features. The company faced difficulties with large live audio and video streams, particularly when Musk was involved, following layoffs of site reliability engineers last year. For instance, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis joined a chat on Spaces in May to announce a presidential run alongside Musk, the stream repeatedly crashed.

According to Musk's biographer, Walter Isaacson, the problem stemmed from instability resulting from a poorly executed relocation of one of the company's data centres. However, these issues do not appear to have been fully resolved. Just last week, when Musk attempted to livestream his visit to the US-Mexico border, the video feed abruptly cut out after about four minutes. Musk was only able to resume the stream after sending an urgent company-wide email to X's staff, as reported by New York Times. In his email, he wrote, "Please fix this."

Also Read

‘Sliving’: Paris Hilton is getting a special revenue share deal to post on X; see details

Elon Musk's Twitter 'X' paying out lakhs to creators; here's how you can earn money from your tweets