Previously relegated to the occasional confused (and often dismissive) segment, eSports are about to have their day in the sun on television.
Turner Broadcasting System Inc. and WME/IMG have partnered to create an eSports league that will broadcast 20 live events over the course of 2016, exclusively on TBS. The yet-to-be-named league coverage will feature high-level competitive gaming, wrapped up in all the bells and whistles you would expect from televised sports. The league and all of its live events will operate out of Turner Studios in Atlanta.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valve’s extremely popular team-based first-person shooter, will be the featured game of the first season. The season comprises two full tournaments, each broadcast over a ten-week period that features a regular season, playoffs, and championship. Live games will be broadcast on Friday nights, which was apparently chosen in order to accommodate the athletes playing in other tournaments on the weekends.
Additional digital content, such as team profiles and more live games, will be released Tuesday through Friday during game weeks, up to and including live during the TBS broadcast Content will be accessible through Bleacher Report’s Team Stream app.
TBS is the first major television network to roll the dice on whether a mainstream American TV audience is prepared to accept video games alongside conventional sports. ESPN 2 broadcast a tournament of Blizzard’s MOBA Heroes of the Storm earlier this year, but received a very mixed reception. The numbers are encouraging, however. According to data from research firm NewZoo included in the league announcement, the current American eSports audience is around 32 million viewers, and is expected to grow to more than 50 million by 2017.
Fans are watching largely through established online players such as the Amazon-owned Twitch, Major League Gaming, and YouTube. Over half of them are under 35, making the eSports audience an especially juicy prospect for advertisers, ever-eager to court millennials.
Turner Sports president Lenny Daniels told Variety that the deal to create the league started to form about a year ago, really moving forward when Kevin Reilly took over as Turner chief creative officer and president of TNT and TBS in November. Reilly believes that their multi-platform approach and established expertise in sports coverage will allow TBS to tap into the large and passionate extant eSports audience, in addition to drawing new people in.
“The level of rabid fandom and engagement that we see in this world is extraordinary,” Reilly said, “and we aim to up the experience for both the players and fans alike and provide a cutting-edge live experience on both linear and digital TBS platforms.”
Turner and WME/IMG will announce further details later this year, including teams, commentary talent, and schedules.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.