In The News
Weekend in Review:
Nintendo News:
Nintendo dominated July TV ad spending, VentureBeat’s Eleanor Semeraro reports. “Nintendo had an estimated spend of $5.8 million on 14 spots that ran over 3,100 times.” Overall spending fell from June numbers.
Curious where The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fits into the series storyline? Nintendo just updated Zelda Portal’s History section.
Minecraft’s Helen Chiang wants America to follow Sweden’s lead and give its employees gap years. Here’s a snippet of her interview with Quartz’s Leah Fessler: “‘I looked at some of these European countries that support a gap year, or more extended parental leave, and it really gives employees the opportunity to…’”
Kakao Games pumped another $16.9 million into Neptune Co, GI.biz’s Rebekah Valentine reports.
Minecraft’s movie is delayed due to director changes, TheWrap’s Umberto Gonzalez and Tony Maglio report. “Warner Bros.’ adaptation of the hit videogame ‘Minecraft’ is undergoing a major rebuild as director and co-writer Rob McElhenney has dropped out of the project.”
Lineage 2: Revolution players have spent “more than $1.3 billion,” Sensor Tower reports. “The majority of this spending has been from players in South Korea, accounting for about 57 percent of the total.”
Partnership News:
NVIDIA and The International are partnering, TEO’s Trent Murray reports. “GeForce will provide GPUs and Monitors for The International 2018, as it has since 2014.”
PENTA Sports and sunmaker are partnering, Esports Insider’s Lydia Mitrevski writes. “The sunmaker name will be featured on PENTA jerseys, website and social media.”
Extra Esports News:
Echo Fox, Panda Global and Tempo Storm are fielding teams for Shadowverse Esports, according to a press release.
OpenAI’s bot team won a best-of-three against top Dota 2 casters and former pros, Engadget’s Jamie Rigg reports.
Wolverhampton Wanderers is starting an esports team, Murray reports.
Happy weekend birthdays Victor “GeneRaL” Nirini, Ludwig “zai” Wåhlberg and Koh “GuMiho” Byung Jae!
Evo 2018 News:
Congratulations Rewind on winning Injustice 2, Lima on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Leffen on Super Smash Bros. Melee, LinkRKC on Soul Caliber 6, LowHigh on Tekken 7 and Sonicfox on Dragon Ball FighterZ!
ESPN’s Jacob Wolf did a series of interviews at Evo.
Evo has come and gone, but where did it all begin? The Washington Post’s Imad Khan did a breakdown of the massively popular fighting game tournament’s origins.