Plantronics just released the new headset for gamers. RIG 500 Pro empowers competitive gamers to hear more, react faster, and play longer. The features of the headset: a metal headband with a lightweight exoskeleton, tuned acoustic chambers, 50 mm drivers and intuitive inline volume control which create a high-resolution audio experience. Carl B. from Plantronics demonstrates the new product:
Call of Guardians is a very fast, adventure game created exclusively for mobile devices. MOBA/CCG hybrid PvP game where players choose sides of one Guardian with assigned unique abilities and special weapons. Logan DeMel from Signal Studios explains the rules and introduces one of the game characters – First Officer Helvia Virika III. More details in the link:
The Global eSports revenue will reach $905 million in 2018, a year over year growth of 38.2% according to a new report published by Newzoo, the leading provider of market intelligence covering global games, eSports and mobile markets. For those who need to catch up with recent electronic sport here are some useful bits of terminology, statistics and predictions.
Esports is competitive video gaming at a professional level and in an organized format (a tournament or league) with specific goal (i.e., winning a champion title or prize money) and a clear distinction between players and teams that are competing against each other. The eSports Audience is all people who watch professional eSports independent of how often: Esports Enthusiasts (people who watch professional eSports content more than once a month) and Occasional Viewers (people who watch professional eSports content less than once a month.
The total prize money of all eSports events held in 2017 reached $112 million, breaking the $100 million mark for the first year. In 2018 eSports Enthusiasts will total 165 million, a year-on-year growth of 15.2% and 215 million of Occasional Viewers what makes 380 million participants worldwide, a year-on-year growth of 13.5%. The global average annual ticket revenue per eSports enthusiast will be $5.49 this year, up by 20% from 4.58 in 2017. In 2017, there were 588 major eSports events that generated and estimated $59 million in ticket revenue, up from $32 million in 2016.
Although 380 million people actively participate in eSports the global awareness of it is much broader. The number of people who hear about it but are not participants in 2017 was almost a billion worldwide.
The majority of $905 million of revenue from eSports that is expected at the end of 2018, 77% will be generated directly from sponsorship and advertising and indirectly from media rights and content licenses. Brands are expected to heavily invest in the eSports industry. They will pour $694 million to the end of 2018, an impressive 48% increase since last year.
In the next 10 years eSports will be the most popular sport in the world – predicts Frank Azor, co-founder of Alienware and vice president & general manager of Gaming & XPS for Dell who made the prediction statement during an exclusive interview at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), the biggest annual gaming conference in North America that took place in the middle of June in Los Angeles. The E3 expo featured 70 thousand attendees from 106 countries. E3 is the preeminent showcase for ground-breaking new games and technology that serves the growing community of gamers.
In March of this year Alienware opened its first professional eSportsTraining Facility in North America, located in Los Angeles. Just minutes from Riot Games LCS Studio, this new location helps Team Liquid, a professional gamer franchise team, improve the way they practice, train and prepare for eSports tournament. Alienware is the largest supplier of the gaming computer systems in the world, as a sponsor of the team, they provide the eSports athletes with access to incredible technology that is currently available. Alienware is also talking to new partners to build relationships that allows eSports to grow on unprecedented scale.
There are no other sports out there, with the exception of motorsports racing, where the athlete’s performance has a dependency on their equipment is as great as it is as esports athletics – elaborates Frank Azor. If you look at traditional sport like football or basketball, the equipment that the athletes use maybe helps in tiny fraction of the amount of their competitiveness. eSports however is more closely related to auto racing, the skill is in using the equipment to compete, so when your PC fails on you, you are out of the game.
The global industry has not completed the statistics, but the rumors are that number of people in the audience watching eSports tournaments has already passed the audience of baseball games.
Here is a full coverage of the interview with Frank Azor:
E3, June 2016 – It is a season for Virtual Reality. At E3, the gaming world show that took place in June at the Convention Center in Los Angeles, the VR was presented everywhere. So far, virtual reality is associated with gaming industry sector mostly because the hard-core gaming community is willing to spend large amount of money for special purpose hardware such as VR glasses and games consoles.
VR hardware was the big draw this year. The major platforms that were at the show took the spotlight since there was no major console release. Dominating the major exhibits were the Sony Playstation VR units, Occulus, and Samsung Gear. Dominating the software showcases was dominated by the HTC Vive. Not counting the companies in the private rooms for demos, there were16 companies on the two expo floors with VR hardware or software. These included: Sony, Occulus, Samsung, HTC, Pop up Gaming, Time of VR, Naughty America, CAPCOM, Carl Zeiss, Alienware, Bethesda, Warner Bros, Ubisoft, Cubicle Ninjas, Razer and Nyko.
The computer-simulated reality dates back 77 years. Here are the key moments in VR history. It started in 1939 at the trade show in New York City where introduced View-Master, a stereoscopic alternative to panoramic postcard. After that 30 years passed while Ivan Sutherland came up with first head-mounted display called “The Sword of Diamocles”. It passed another 30 years when the computer games company Sega introduced wrap-around VR glasses at CES in 1993. Two years later Nintendo produced the gaming console and named it Virtual Boy.
The real gold rush for virtual reality started in 2010. The market research analysts from Deloitte, CCS Insight, Barclays and Digi-Capital accordingly forecast that $24 million of VR devices will be sold by 2018, and revenue from virtual and augmented reality products and content will reach to the $150 billion mark by 2020.
National Association of Broadcasters NVIDIA