ESPORTS UPDATE – 10 THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED!
eSports gets another financial boost this week as two of America’s biggest names invest into the rapidly expanding eSports organization, NRG Esports.
Malaysia’s top pay-TV operator looks to launch a permanent channel dedicated to eSports; it’s not official but the signs are there.
The launch of Xbox Live Tournaments Platform was announced by Jason Ronald, Head of Xbox Advanced Technology Group, yesterday and looks to allow game developers to create their own game tournaments.
Read these stories and more in our round up of eSports news below.
The Halo World Championship preview
On Aug. 4, Halo took a leap in its return to esports prominence by announcing the Halo World Championship Series. Over the span of four months teams from all around the world vied for a chance to qualify for the Halo World Championship and a cut of a staggering $1 million prize pool. Through crowdfunding, the prize pool has climbed to $2.5 million, and after grueling months of shocking upsets, roster shuffles and some of the best Halo the world has ever seen, only 16 teams remain. This weekend at the Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California, those teams will fight for esports glory.
Read the full story here
Shaq, A-Rod, and Jimmy Rollins invest in NRG eSports
Two of the biggest names in American sports over the past decade have invested into a rapidly expanding esports organization.
Professional sports players are entering esports at a rapid pace, with NRG Esports announcing three big-name investors today.
Retired NBA player and Inside the NBA analyst Shaquille O’Neal and New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez, are investing in NRG eSports, which owns teams in League of Legends and Counter-Strike. Chicago White Sox shortstop Jimmy Rollins also contributed to the organization’s latest round of investment.
“We think they will help legitimize the space,” NRG’s chairman, Andy Miller, tells the Daily Dot. “They all come from the traditional sports world. They were all unbelievably young when they became professionals, like our guys.”
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New Xbox Live Tournaments Platform is for developers, players and esports leagues
The Xbox Live Tournaments Platform will allow developers to create their own game tournaments powered by Xbox Live, Jason Ronald, head of Xbox Advanced Technology Group said in unveiling the new program at a GDC 2016 panel today.
Like Xbox Live’s built-in matchmaking capabilities on console and Windows PC, the Xbox Live Tournaments Platform is designed to make tournaments easy for developers to integrate into games. Microsoft’s ambitions go beyond developers, though: Ronald announced partnerships with esports networks ESL and FaceIt, who will stage their tournaments using the platform.
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Esports veterans talk about the risks of professional gaming
Today, esports are on pace to reach $1.1 billion in spending by 2019 according to market research firm Newzoo, but it wasn’t always a big deal
A panel of former professional gamers at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco spoke about the growing esports scene. Dennis “Thresh” Fong was one of the first professional gamers (the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes him as the very first, actually), getting his start in ’90s first-person shooters like Quake and Doom. He now runs the gaming social network Raptr.
He recalled a Microsoft tournament, called Deathmatch 95, that was one of first esports tournaments he could remember. It took place at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond and went on until 3 a.m., well past schedule. Instead of the millions of dollars that major tournaments give out now, Fong said that the prizes at Deathmatch 95 were simply random goodies worth a few thousand dollars.
Now, esports prizes have gone from mouse pads to millions of dollars. Pro gamers have gone from making $300 a month to six figures, Stephen Ellis, a former League of Legends pro, noted. He also said that developers can not simply proclaim that their games are an esport.
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Why Apple’s Greatest eSports Innovations Will Come From Within
Apple is known for developing some of the world’s most beloved products. From the iPod and MacBook Pro to the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air, Apple has become an empire unlike any other.
Thus, whenever a new industry rises up, investors look to Apple to see what the company will do next. Streaming music? Check. Streaming video? Check. Smart cars? Check.
Only the former has been confirmed, but Apple is expected to introduce its own streaming video service in 2016. Little is known about its auto initiative, but Tesla founder Elon Musk confirmed that Apple has hired several of his former employees.
Now that eSports are getting their day in the spotlight, investors have begun to wonder if Apple will take notice. If so, this wouldn’t the first time that an industry stalwart made waves by entering the space. Amazon famously 1-upped its game when it acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion. The dot-com retailer now controls the site responsible for streaming the most successful eSports events. Twitch also gave Amazon a new way to monetize consumers who simply want to watch other people play games, whether it’s merely for fun or on a more competitive level.
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Counter Strike Majors Need A Format Change
The Counter Strike majors are the most prestigious events in all of Counter Strike. Players and teams have repeated endlessly the significance of these particular events; the importance of playing on that massive stage in front of the energizing crowd and the extra exerted effort in practice in the months leading up to the premier event. Counter Strike Majors are undoubtedly the pinnacle of FPS Esports, yet, the format of the tournament leaves a lot to be desired.
Counter Strike’s brilliance as a spectator sport has largely alleviated and perhaps even hidden some of these significant flaws but just contemplate how much more incredible the illustrious Valve-sponsored majors would be had Valve taken the measures to rid the event of these blatant deficiencies.
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LEARN FROM THE BEST: GORDON HAYWARD TALKS SPORTS, ESPORTS
We can trace this love back to childhood. Like many ‘90s kids, Hayward grew up with a succession of Nintendo consoles, playing games such as Contra, Double Dragon, Super Mario, and Duck Hunt (with his dad, whom we can probably thank for Hayward’s interest), and eventually moving onto N64 titles like Ocarina of Time and Project Gotham Racing. However, it was the XBox that caught his attention fully with just one word: “Halo.”
“I’ve always been a competitive person, so I’ve always loved the competitive side of video games,” Hayward recalled. “Halo was the first game that I was super competitive in; we had a team when I was in high school and we went out and won a few local tournaments.” Once you get a taste for that level of play, it’s hard to go back.
Hayward gravitated to PC gaming “by the end of high school, early college.” As before, it was the thrill of the chase that kept him hooked. “That’s what kinda drew me to Starcraft and now that’s drawing me to League of Legends,” he said. ”I love the competitive aspect of those games.”
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Who Benefits: Riot Games acquires Radiant Entertainment
Last week, Radiant Entertainment announced that they would be acquired by Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends.
Radiant, so far known for the civilization construction game Stonehearth (which I backed on Kickstarter) and their fighting game Rising Thunder, will be joining the company to develop a new game for Riot. Rising Thunder‘s alpha will ending, presumeably spelling the end of the title; they will still be working on Stonehearth.
Riot presumably will be leveraging the work that Radiant put into Rising Thunder in order to produce a similar game based on the same mechanics. In this case, I firmly believe that Riot’s acquisition of Radiant Entertainment is to leverage Rising Thunder into a fighting game set inside the League of Legends universe.
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Miami University announces varsity eSports program
The first varsity eSports program at a top tier U.S. university is being launched by the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies at Miami University. Teams will start competing in fall 2016.
With varsity eSports, Miami joins a growing community. In 2014 there were 89 million eSports fans, but that number is projected to nearly double by 2017 to 145 million, a number roughly equal to the fan base of the National Football League according to Repu.com Report on the Growth of ESports. Currently a $250-300 million industry, by 2019 eSports is expected to generate just over $1 billion in revenue annually, per Repu.com.
“This is something we’ve been working on with our students all year,” said Phill Alexander, visiting assistant professor of composition/professional writing and Heanon Wilkins Faculty Fellow at AIMS. “Miami University and AIMS, in particular, have some of the most innovative, dedicated, creative students in the country, and our students have their fingers on the pulse of eSports and are engaged with the community. Thanks to their grassroots efforts, this initiative has gone from a student dream to a reality.”
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Astro may launch permanent e-sports channel
ASTRO Malaysia Holdings Bhd, the country’s top pay-TV operator, is looking at launching a permanent channel dedicated to electronic sports.
Currently, it broadcasts major e-sports tournaments on Channel 808. On days when there are no major e-sports tournaments, the channel may air repeat broadcasts or remain inactive.
“We are still looking at the plan for a dedicated channel and if it is feasible, we will make the necessary announcement,” Astro’s head of sports Lee Choong Khay told Digital News Asia (DNA) via email.
While it has not made an official decision, there are signs that Astro is placing an increasing importance on the e-sports segment, based on the popularity of the channel.
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