During The Game Awards last week, Epic Games debuted a new digital marketplace that offers a favorable 88/12 percent revenue split to game creators. By opening a new marketplace, the company may be establishing a game store competitor to Valve’s Steam, which has dominated PC game distribution for over ten years. Epic chief executive Tim Sweeney has also pledged to better support creators. Although the store’s first list of games is small, it will be part of Epic Launcher, the software required to update and play “Fortnite.” Continue reading Epic’s New Game Store Poses Threat to Steam’s Dominance

For a long time, we have posited that the future of immersive media will be 10 percent virtual reality and 90 percent augmented reality. In the coming year the VR and AR technologies and markets will continue to advance, but in different directions and for different reasons. VR is moving into niche markets, location-based entertainment (LBE), business applications and eSports. Meanwhile, we expect AR to focus on innovation across numerous fronts, including high-end niche business and professional applications, low-end consumer experiences and new glasses with limited feature sets. Continue reading CES: The Next Wave of Immersive Media Tech and Markets

Sprint, the fourth largest wireless carrier in the U.S., plans to deploy a 5G mobile smart hub in the first half of 2019 developed with HTC and Qualcomm Technologies. Sprint says the “device will deliver multimedia and connected data capabilities in a compact and portable design,” featuring Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X50 modem for 5G in addition to Gigabit LTE capabilities. The Kansas-based telecom will introduce its mobile 5G network in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix and Washington, D.C. Additional markets, the device name and feature specs will be announced at a later date. Continue reading Sprint Plans 2019 5G Hotspot Launch with HTC, Qualcomm

A future untapped market for media and entertainment is the time gained in our days thanks to the freedom provided by self-driving cars. As the world’s population increases, travel times also continue to grow. When we no longer have to focus on the road while in our vehicles, all that time becomes a perfect opportunity to provide content. Audi and Disney have partnered to create what the German automaker is calling a “new type of media” to fill that time. The fruits of this partnership are scheduled to be revealed at January’s CES in Las Vegas. Continue reading Audi, Disney to Demo Media for Autonomous Vehicles at CES

When a Nintendo Switch game is uploaded before its official release date, the pirates hide the original leaker behind a wall of middlemen, and congratulate themselves online for their cleverness. Nintendo has endured piracy of the highly anticipated “Diablo III” and “Dark Souls: Remastered,” both released by pirates a few days before their official launch. The company has had better luck stopping websites that offer illegal access to retro-games and ROMs, games that are emulated from read-only memory chips. Continue reading Switch Pirates Evade Capture, Nintendo Takes on ROM Sites

The annual VRX Conference & Expo is slated for December 6-7 in San Francisco. The ETC’s Phil Lelyveld will be moderating a panel on the second day, focused on immersive storytelling with panelists including Ted Schilowitz of Paramount, Paul Raphael of Felix & Paul Studios, Bruna Berford of Penrose Studios and Ryan Pulliam of Specular Theory. VRX organizers are gathering a stellar lineup of top companies, execs and investors across entertainment and tech to cut through the hype and get to the heart of what’s really happening in XR. For those interested in attending, enter code ETC15 at registration for a 15 percent discount. Continue reading VRX 2018: Bridging Entertainment, Enterprise and Technology

Microsoft and Google are engaged in efforts to enable people to play triple-A games — the most visually complex, big budget games — on devices that are not connected to the Internet, without expensive specialized hardware. The two tech behemoths join game developer Electronic Arts in this 10+year push to allow gamers to stream from the cloud, anytime and anywhere, attracting those who don’t want to buy game consoles or high-end PCs. The move might also tempt existing gamers to play more and spend more time and money. Continue reading Google, Microsoft Target Triple-A Games via Cloud Streaming

The annual VRX Conference & Expo is slated for December 6-7 in San Francisco. The ETC’s Phil Lelyveld will be moderating a panel on the second day, focused on immersive storytelling with panelists including Ted Schilowitz of Paramount, Paul Raphael of Felix & Paul Studios, Bruna Berford of Penrose Studios and Ryan Pulliam of Specular Theory. VRX organizers are gathering a stellar lineup of top companies, execs and investors across entertainment and tech to cut through the hype and get to the heart of what’s really happening in XR. For those interested in attending, enter code ETC15 at registration for a 15 percent discount. Continue reading VRX 2018: Bridging Entertainment, Enterprise and Technology

In South Korea, where eSports was born, a world championship match-up between the Chinese team Invictus Gaming and European team Fnatic was watched by tens of millions of fans around the world. The two battled out the championship finals of “League of Legends” in a 50,000-seat stadium in Incheon, where the Chinese team won the championship for the first time. Riot Games’ “League of Legends” (dubbed LoL by fans), released ten years ago, is still highly esteemed in the $13 billion global gaming industry. Continue reading ‘League of Legends’ Tournament Highlights eSports Growth

According to Rockstar Games, its “Red Dead Redemption 2” earned more than $725 million in global retail sales in its first three days on the market, breaking several records. The company deemed it “the biggest opening weekend in the history of entertainment,” surpassing the $640 million raked in by “Avengers: Infinity War,” which earned more than $640 million in its opening weekend. But “Red Dead Redemption 2” doesn’t top Rockstar Games’ own “Grand Theft Auto V,” which pulled in more than $1 billion in its first three days. Continue reading Rockstar’s ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ Breaks Sales Records

The Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office just passed exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that legalizes the so-called right to repair. Although the DMCA was created to prevent copyright piracy, it also resulted in a host of problematic side effects. Because devices such as smartphones come loaded with digital rights management (DRM) software, users infringed copyright laws if they attempted to repair such devices. With the new exemptions, users are now free to do so. Continue reading Library of Congress, Copyright Office Unlock Gadget Repair

Electronic Arts unveiled Project Atlas, its “cloud-native gaming” technology, via a Medium blog post by chief technology officer Ken Moss. Although he did not say when it would be fully deployed and functional, Moss described Project Atlas as designed to “harness the massive power of cloud computing and artificial intelligence and putting it into the hands of game makers in a powerful, easy to use, one-stop experience.” The game engine combines rendering, game logic, physics, animation, audio, and more. Continue reading EA Announces New AI-Powered, Cloud-Native Gaming Tech

At the Unite 2018 developers conference last week, Unity Technologies’ head of cinematics, Adam Myhill, unveiled CineCast, a synthetic co-director for filming video games that has implications for narrative storytelling and sports broadcasts of all kinds. Myhill, with the help of four players and a stand-in director — professional gamer Stephanie Harvey — demoed the CineCast mode for “GTFO,” a first-person shooter and the first property to use CineCast. Under Harvey’s watchful eye, CineCast automatically and in real-time chose the best and highest quality shot to move the action forward, with Harvey making only a few, on-the-fly adjustments. Continue reading Unity Deepens Storytelling Workbench with CineCast Feature

Despite delays in launching its next-gen processors, Intel posted a robust 19 percent growth in revenue, with profits soaring 42 percent. The red-hot market for PCs pressured Intel’s factories, but its focus on servers and high-end PCs boosted its positive numbers. The company’s revenue in Q3 was $19.16 billion — more than the $18.1 billion predicted by analysts, and up from $16.2 billion a year earlier. Intel partnered with Streamlabs to offer stream-capable hardware and software to third-party device manufacturers. Continue reading Intel Benefits from Hot PC Market, Partners with Streamlabs

Microsoft’s major investment in the cloud is beginning to pay off. In the last several quarters, this sector has grown so fast that the company’s market cap has soared to about $785 billion. Now, Microsoft reported that the results of its latest quarter have exceeded analyst expectations. When Satya Nadella became chief executive, Microsoft’s revenue largely came from marketing its Windows operating system on personal computers. Nadella turned the company towards cloud computing, with Azure as its core offering. Continue reading Microsoft Develops Hybrid Cloud Solution Strategy with Azure