After being delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Intel World Open will be going ahead this year, coinciding with the Tokyo Olympics. 

Organised in partnership with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the global Rocket League and Street Fighter V tournament was originally announced back in 2019, and was scheduled to coincide with the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. 

However, with the COVID-19 crisis forcing the postponement of the Olympics, the Intel World Open was also put on ice. 

Qualifiers for both Rocket League and Street Fighter are now scheduled to get underway in June, with regional finals planned for mid-July. 

AYO.NEWS says:

Staying with the Olympics and esports, in April, the IOC announced the inaugural Olympic Virtual Series (OVS). The first ever official Olympic-licensed event for virtual sports, the OVS will feature sim sports including baseball, cycling, motorsports, rowing, and sailing. 

However, despite the improving COVID situation in many countries, the crisis is still worsening in some areas, particularly in India and surrounding countries. Also, the rapid spread of numerous variants, and their continued mutation, still threatens to undermine the global vaccination program, and poses the very real threat of a descent back into crisis everywhere. 

With this in mind, it’s easy to see why there is so much opposition in Japan to the games going ahead. And, if the IOC does press ahead despite the clear risks, and it results in a serious outbreak, it could irrevocably damage the reputation of the IOC and the games.

Brazilian PUBG MOBILE tournament, Copa Netenho, has announced PC hardware brand Pichau Gaming and Facebook Gaming as sponsors. 

Consisting of four groups, each with 16 sides, the tournament is run in partnership with local influencer Neto Cavalcante, and will be broadcast on Netenho’s Facebook page, and Brazilian gaming television channel, Loading. 

Group one will include PUBG MOBILE Pro League Brazil (PMPL Brazil) players, while the second will feature Netenho Facebook supporters, and the remaining two will include members of the esports community and the Creator Squad made up of PUBG MOBILE program partners.

Commenting on the news, Netenho said: “It is very gratifying as a PUBG MOBILE ambassador in Brazil to have all this support while I launch my own cup. Today, a large part of my base of followers who follow me are from PUBG MOBILE, so I am very happy to launch this project, which is an idea that I have had for a long time.”

In addition to a prize pool of $48K BRL, PUBG MOBILE merch including exclusive kits, headphones, and gaming chairs, will also be awarded to players according to “audience goals.”

Neto Cavalcante currently has 258K followers on Instagram, over 141K on Facebook, 61.3K on Twitter, and 933K subscribers on YouTube.

Volumetric video specialist, Arcturus, has secured $5M funding in a seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures. 

The round also attracted participation from leaders in the sports, telecom, gaming, and music space, including HBSE Ventures; NTT Docomo Ventures; Build Ventures; Co-Founder, Co-Chairman, and former Co-CEO of Riot Games, Marc Merril; and CEO of Atlantic Records, Craig Kallman. 

Arcturus says it intends to use the new capital to scale its software development team, focus efforts on sales growth, and expand the product line with an emphasis on live streaming features. 

Founded by a management team with years of collective experience at major companies including at Netflix, Autodesk, Pixar, Dreamworks, Google, YouTube and Uber, Arcturus is revolutionising the immersive content experience across a range of verticals including e-commerce, music, sports, interactive media, and gaming.

From viewing sports in holographic form, to engaging with interactive digital human assistants, and more immersive forms of social media and e-commerce, volumetric video is enabling the consumption of content in completely new ways. 

With volumetric video, content is captured by an array of cameras and depth sensors that surround a subject to create a photorealistic model. These holograms are fully 3D and interactive, making them a natural fit for any spatial experience such as augmented or virtual reality.

Moritz Baier-Lentz, Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, explained: “Volumetric technology is exciting for a simple reason: it starts with reality. Think about it: Most of today’s digital media—music, photos, or film—begin with capturing the real world. Thanks to Arcturus’ extraordinary technology, a future where you record yourself, your friends, or your environment with a LIDAR-enabled smartphone, and transport them into the next interactive and 3-dimensional social media post, product showcase, or video game is closer than ever.”

Arcturus’ flagship product is HoloSuite, a SaaS platform for editing and distributing volumetric video, which consists of HoloEdit and HoloStream. The HoloSuite platform enables users to author, edit, and stream volumetrically captured performers and environments and can be interacted with on any desktop browser and smart mobile devices.

HoloEdit is an optimized pipeline for the editing and processing of volumetric video and HoloStream is an adaptive streaming solution extending the same technology utilized by the streaming giants, Netflix and Amazon Video, to stream volumetric video directly to the viewer. HoloEdit enables content creators and game studios to easily edit and compress clips, then distribute them to third-party tools, including real-time game engines like Unity, Unreal, and more.

Looking ahead, Arcturus CEO, Kamal Mistry, said: “Arcturus’ mission is to create a future where digital human holograms are captured from reality, customized and even interact with the viewer in real time. This can take the form of digital customer service agents, human avatars, virtual 3D concerts and fashion runways, or giving access to the perspectives of professional athletes in broadcast sports. With the backing of BITKRAFT Ventures, true leaders in games and XR investments, we are confident Arcturus will serve as a catalyst to enable widespread accessibility to volumetric video creation, enabling millions of users to create a new form of interactive content.”

Arcturus worked with Docomo for the Docomo Open House in 2021, specifically featuring HoloSuite, including HoloStream, the adaptive bitrate streaming solution for volumetric video. Arcturus has supported numerous brand and celebrity activations including Verizon’s fan experience at Super Bowl LIV and Samsung’s 2020 phone release featuring popular Korean boy band BTS. 

Discover more about Arcturus here.

AYO.NEWS says:

The rapid advancement of volumetric video technology, thanks to trailblazers like Arcturus is opening up whole new vistas of exciting possibilities across the digital space – and its potential impact in the gaming industry is hard to overstate. 

Already boasting an incredibly experienced team and having proven its capabilities, we’re sure the backing of BITKRAFT and the other investors will help the Arcturus shift up a gear and dazzle the world. Soon, the clunky, unrealistic 3D models of the past will be a distant memory, and we’ll be so used to fully immersive, lifelike experiences that we’ll wonder how we ever lived without them. Holograms, hell yeah! 

Staying with BITKRAFT Ventures, last month the firm announced a strategic partnership with Delphi Digital, a leading blockchain advisory firm dedicated to advancing the understanding and development of the growing digital asset market.

The games industry in the German city of Hamburg has a unique new virtual home, in the form of the Gamecity Online Hub. 

Instead of a regular website or directory format, the new initiative uses a fully playable browser-based game to give visitors a virtual first-hand experience of Hamburg and its games economy. 

Using their avatars, visitors can walk through digital comic-style miniatures of Hamburg’s harbor, the infamous St. Pauli-District, the Stadtpark, and the historic Speicherstadt area – while discovering the diverse games ecosystem of the region and interacting via in-game chat.

With over 200 companies, from solo developers to SMEs and large games corporations, numerous educational institutions and other companies in the games value chain, Hamburg is one of Europe’s most active games metropolises.

Gamecity Hamburg also gives insights into its Games Lift incubator and prototype funding programs. Along with networking and information events, teams will also present games they have successfully developed with the help of the programs.

The Gamecity Hamburg initiative has been made possible thanks to the cooperation of locally-based Super Crowd Entertainment, which developed the technical platform, along with the financial support of companies represented on the hub.  

AYO.NEWS says:

What a great initiative! We can see many other cities and industries following this lead over the coming months and years. Now, we’re off to explore Hamburg!

KRAFTON, the South Korean video game developer, has announced the reveal of BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA. 

Developed by KRAFTON, the game will offer a world class AAA multiplayer gaming experience on mobile. BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA will release with exclusive in-game events like outfits and features and will have its own esports ecosystem with tournaments and leagues. The game will launch as a free-to-play experience on mobile devices.

BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA, a battle royale experience, will have a period of pre-registration before the launch. The game will be available to play only in India. KRAFTON will collaborate with partners to build an esports ecosystem while bringing in-game content regularly, starting with a series of India specific in-game events at launch, to be announced later.

With privacy and data security being a top priority, KRAFTON will be working with partners, to ensure data protection and security, at each stage. This will ensure privacy rights are respected, and all data collection and storage will be in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in India.

Lokesh Suji, Director, Esports Federation of India & Vice President of the Asian Esports Federation (AESF), commented: “It’s good to see that Krafton has considered the Indian requirements and has modified the game and this will surely fuel the Indian esports ecosystem. Krafton has been already taking positive initiatives in the Indian market in the last few months which is very heartening to see and also highlights the capability of the esports ecosystem in India.”

Tarun Gupta, Founder, Ultimate Battle, India’s first-ever one-stop online esports platform added: “Battlegrounds India, a PUBG Mobile variant’s India launch has been highly anticipated in recent months. Krafton has been very active in the Indian market recently which was an indication that the PUBG Mobile variant may soon see the daylight in India.

“At Ultimate Battle, we are excited to hear about this and will be adding Battlegrounds India on the platform as soon as it launches. We forecast to see the downloads cross the 1m+ mark in the first week of the launch.”

AYO.NEWS says:

This is great news for the Indian gaming community, which has sorely missed PUBG MOBILE since the Indian government banned it in September 2020. We’re sure it will be embraced and see it easily surpassing the 1M+ download mark in the first week after launch. 

Staying with Krafton and India, last week the publisher announced it was donating over $200K to help the country’s COVID-19 relief efforts.

Simulation racing team Red Bull Racing Esports has named UK-based Fierce PC as its official PC partner. 

The partnership will see Fierce’s PC used for racing on several platforms, including Codemasters’ F1 2020 and iRacing, and Fierce’s systems will also be used to equip the Red Bull Racing Erena. 

Red Bull says each system will be optimised for competition through the use of the finest hardware available, including NVIDIA 30 series cards, Intel processors, ASUS motherboards and Corsair components, and the same PCs will also be made available for sale to the public. 

Regarding the partnership, Oliver Hughes, Chief Marketing Officer at Red Bull Racing Esports, said: “Motorsport is all about the pursuit of technical perfection and the optimisation of the equipment at hand. It’s no different in Esports and Fierce PC’s high-powered systems will ensure that the Team is able to perform at the top of its game, no matter the event. Built using state-of-the-art components, Fierce PC’s computers are tailor-made to handle the most demanding applications and will give the Team’s drivers, and sim drivers all over the world, power, performance and reliability when it matters most – in the heat of battle.”

Bradley Haworth, Marketing Manager at Fierce PC, added: “Myself and the rest of the team at Fierce PC are delighted to have secured this partnership with Red Bull Racing Esports. It was clear from the initial conversations we had together that our brands aligned perfectly. Therefore, it was obvious that we had to proceed with supporting the Red Bull Racing Esports Team as their Official PC Partner. This partnership will see us support the Red Bull Racing Esports team by providing all the powerful hardware their drivers require to perform at their best during competition. The systems we have configured especially for the team include the latest and best hardware from industry-leading brands such as Intel, NVIDIA, ASUS, Corsair, and Seagate.”

Red Bull Racing Esports also has partnerships in place with brands including Fanatec, hummel, and HyperX.