By Jamie Barrie
Microsoft’s Xbox team recently announced that it has acquired Beam, an interactive live streaming platform for gamers. So what makes this acquisition so different for Microsoft? Well for starters the Beam was a company that was owned by 18-year-old Matt Salsamendi who launched his Seattle-based startup just 8 months ago.
The terms of the deal have not been disclosed by either of the parties but it was completed in a move to support Microsoft’s growth strategy around Xbox Live, one of the world’s most popular social gaming platforms.
Microsoft commented online that it is excited about Beam’s ability to converge “playing and watching” and it will help make Xbox Live “more social and fun.”
Salsamendi and Beam first attracted attention after TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield competition in May as he took the stage to explain how traditional gaming platforms do not provide any way for viewers to participate.
Beam offered something new to gamers, it allowed gamers crowdsource control of the game so viewers can engage with players in real time. This allows viewers to do things like change the gamer’s weapon, control the environment and warn them about possible enemies. They can do it all with virtually no transitional delay which is what truly sets it apart from other game streaming platforms, which have several second delays.
It is interesting to hear of Salsamendi talk of his work at such a young age, He is quick to let people know that his early success in life hasn’t come without a lot of hard work. Salsamendi wrote in a recent blog post that he vividly remembers many of the hundreds of late nights that were spent creating hundreds of thousands of lines of code and the millions of hours of streams during beta and that was just the getting the business started, then it was staying focused on growth along with product development.
In an email to media, Salsamendi wrote, “I knew that what we were building was unique and exciting, and the acquisition came with very good timing,” in the same email he states, “We’ve got an awesome platform, a great community, and now it’s time to grow.”
Salsamendi also commented that after the sale of the company that he will stay on as the head of Beam at Microsoft’s headquarters, as part of the Team Xbox’s engineering group.