Some latest news in the scene.
KOCCA Japan has organized another seminar event on a hot topic in the industry (5G!) and I had to pay a visit to check out. Bottom line: there was a lot to learn.
Three guest speakers from Korea: 1. The producer of 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony, 2. The VP of PUBG, and 3., a representative of Samsung electric’s Mobile Communication Business.
The main purpose of my visit was No. 2 — To know more about PUBG’s business and their take on esports. Now PUBG being one of the most played game in history and fastest growth (they have 7 Guinness records), they were being pretty aggressive on their esports strategy I’d say. Three main focus area were
- Unifying the tournament event rules – the rules used to differ depending on the region
- Real time API adoption – Pro athlete’s game data can now be used in live broadcasting
- Team-branded in-gaming item sales
They are preparing to launch some kind of platform that I wasn’t sure if they explained fully. Given the many users and teams already out there in the world, the esports growth looked very promising. They just had a very successful tournament event in Berlin with a local government support as well this year.
5G’s core capability boiled down to what the Samsung representative has summarized:
- Enhanced mobility broadband (faster connection)
- Ultra reliable & low latency communication (no disconnection)
- Massive machine type communication (all devices connected)
Given the cross-platform games and the upcoming cloud game platform release by Google, the hardware will no longer be an obstacle to users and for game makers they will need to focus on the software contents instead of hardware & software pair. The disruption in the gaming scene by such a “cloud transformation” seems very promising and 5G seems like the right catalyst to enable it.
Now would this be a strong signal for the Japanese gaming industry to change? Let’s see..
Just eSports 