In The News
The Atari VCS is being delayed again until late 2019 to make it more powerful. “The Atari VCS will now be powered by a 14nm AMD processor featuring high-performance Radeon Vega graphics architecture,” the press release reads.
Team17’s profits went up “18 per cent to £19.8 million after its maiden financial year as a public company. It follows a revenue increase of 46 per cent to £43.2 million. Both figures are record numbers for the UK company,” GI.biz’s Christopher Dring reports.
Acquisitions:
Double Eleven has acquired “VooFoo Studios for an undisclosed fee,” Dring writes. “Double Eleven has also acquired VooFoo’s multi-platform Mantis Engine.”
X Rocker acquired Custom Controllers UK, according to a press release. “The acquisition of Custom Controllers UK offers the Company a strategic opportunity to grow their presence in gaming.”
Epic Games:
Epic Games put out a development roadmap for its Epic Store.
Epic defended itself against “claims that its digital games store is accessing users’ Steam data and transmitting information back to the company,” GI.biz’s James Batchelor writes. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said “it’s actually my fault for pushing the launcher team to support it super quickly and then identifying that we had to change it.” Valve also confirmed to Bleeping Computer it is investigating what information the Epic Store is collecting.
Nvidia is preparing to roll out its GeForce Now cloud initiative to Japan and South Korea,” GI.biz’s Matthew Handrahan reports. “At present, after just over a year in beta, the service has 300,000 users ‘playing regularly’, and more than a million people on a waiting list.”
Unity:
Is partnering with Tencent “to support Tencent Cloud. This will be available later this year,” VentureBeat’s Mike Minotti reports. “Tencent Cloud is a cloud computing service from China’s largest game company.”
An AR Foundation update “or the Unity Editor tool will enable game developers to quickly create AR software that can run on both Android and iOS devices,” VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi writes.
United Kingdom supermarkets continue to hold less and less sway as physical game copies are purchased elsewhere. They “accounted for less than 20 per cent of the UK physical games market last year. 19.6 per cent of the boxed games sold in 2018 came via grocery stores, a drop of 1.4 per cent compared with 2017,” Dring writes.
Studios:
Chet Faliszek and Kimberly Voll, of Portal and Riot Games, respectively, “launched a new studio called Stray Bombay Company that will focus on the development of AI-driven ‘collaborative gaming experiences,’” PC Gamer’s Andy Chalk reports.
5th Planet is closing its Nottingham studio as a “strategic decision that involved laying off the 14 people remaining at the studio,” GI.biz’s Brendan Sinclair reports.
Halo 5 is getting a pizza skin after 343 Industries was sent pizzas from fans excited that Halo: The Master Chief Collection is coming to PC.
The Call of Duty Mobile website is up and running. You can pre-register here.
Twitch:
The most watched Twitch channels for the last week can be found here.
Streamer James “Cloneman16” D’Arcangelo received a temporary suspension after “using a term that Twitch deemed to be offensive enough to take action,” Dexerto’s David Purcell reports. D’Arcangelo tweeted that “it was for hateful conduct for the word ‘mongoloid’. I didn’t know the true meaning of it till now and I would like to apologize for this.”
Extra Esports News:
Congratulations…
Luminosity Gaming on winning CWL Fort Worth! They defeated Splyce to take home $125,000. Reciprocity came in 3rd and 100 Thieves in 4th.
FC Black on winning the Game Fuel Open Bracket tournament at CWL Fort Worth! They defeated Mindfreak.
TNC Predator on winning World Electronic Sports Games 2018 for Dota 2! They defeated Keen Gaming to take home $500,000. White-Off came in 3rd and Ukraine in 4th.
Team Reciprocity on winning World Electronic Sports Games 2018 for StarCraft II! They defeated Ence eSports to take home $150,000. Jin Air Green Wings came in 3rd and Newbee in 4th.
Final Round 2019 results and winners can be found here.
EPICENTER will host “the last Dota Pro Circuit event of the 2018-2019 season. This will be the last event before festivities for The International kick off later this year,” Unikrn’s Dustin Steiner writes.
Rainbow Six Siege is expanding its revenue-sharing program, TEO’s Andrew Hayward writes. “Phase 2 of Rainbow Six Siege‘s revenue-sharing pilot program will include 16 teams, up from 11 last year.”
Xtrfy is sponsoring Grayhound Gaming, according to their announcement.
Interviews: Journalist Ben Fischer (Pressland Editors).