In The News
Fortnite news:
Drake said “he would be willing to write a rap about Fortnite if Epic Games would include his iconic dance [Hotline Bling] as an emote,” Game Informer’s Jon Bowman writes.
The Esports Observer’s Jordan Fragen reports Fortnite took the top spot for the beginning of April’s Twitch viewership. Almost 30 million hours of Fortnite were watched, followed by League of Legends at 19 million and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds at 14.1 million.
Inventor Richard Baker’s patent lawsuit against EA, Microsoft and Nintendo left a federal appeals court unimpressed, GamesIndustry.biz’s Haydn Taylor reports. “The patent in question refers to a device that allows users to control computers using motion and video capture, much like a Kinect … Baker was also suing Harmonix and Majesco Entertainment.”
Andrew House, formerly of Sony, gave his thoughts about PlayStation 5 at GamesBeat Summit 2018. Here’s a snippet, according to Game Informer’s Imran Khan: “‘I don’t have any firm knowledge on this, but my sense is that you will see the disc around in…’”
Congratulations to Shovel Knight on selling over two million copies.
$3.2 billion. That’s what “the augmented and virtual reality consumer market” has reached, Taylor writes. “Projected growth estimates the VR global install base will rise from 28 million to 75.7 million by 2021, and that revenues will reach $5.9 billion.”
Huya Broadcasting “filed on Monday with the SEC to raise up to $200 million in an initial public offering,” Nasdaq.com reports.
Tencent opened up WeChat’s “Mini Program platform to outside developers for the first time and released a new batch of games,” South China Morning Post’s Iris Deng reports.
Female Legends received a “5 million SEK (£423,000) investment with a view to getting more women involved in esports across the board,” Esports Insider’s Sam Cooke reports.
Lithuanian club BC Žalgiris is entering esports with LoL, CS:GO and Hearthstone teams, The Esports Observer’s Graham Ashton writes.
Call of Duty news:
Anthony “NAMELESS” Wheeler started a Call of Duty podcast, Dot Esports’ Justin Binkowski reports. The first episode is out.
Dexerto’s Ross Deason reports Adam “KiLLa” Sloss is banned for the rest of the year following account recovery.
Happy birthday to StarCraft player Choi “Trust” Sung Il!