Read original story on: Gizmodo
Oculus has announced its acquisition of Nimble VR, a two-year-old startup that began with gloves, evolved to Kinect, and finally developed its own mounted 3D camera to track hand motions in real time. This acquisition points to Oculus’ ambition in creating a gesture-motion game controller for its headset, which would open up great possibilities for a deeper, VR-powered immersive engagement.
Read original story on: Engadget
Earlier this year, we witnessed eSports’ transition back into the physical space at the ESL One Championship held at Madison Square Garden Theater. Now the UK is reportedly getting its first-ever dedicated venue for hosting competitive gaming matches in London next year. Gfinity, a league organiser for multiplayer games says the new arena will accommodate up to 500 spectators once completed.
With Amazon’s billion-dollar acquisition of video gameplay-streaming platform Twitch, competitive video gaming, often called “eSports”, has matured into a multi-billion industry. And today, we experienced this phenomenon firsthand at ESL One New York, ESL’s second major Dota 2 tournament this year, held at Madison Square Garden Theater .
For some, it might be hard to imagine that people would actually pay over $60 just to watch other people play video games. But as Twitch’s success has proven, there’s definitely a market today for speculating digital gameplay. Video game tournaments have been around long before streaming services like Twitch brought it into mainstream spotlight, but all that added attention certainly doesn’t hurt. In fact, around a thousand enthusiastic game-lovers filled up the spacious venue.
As brands follow where the audience goes, eSports might just become the next frontier for marketers to explore. With help from a plethora of sponsors such as T-Mobile, Pizza Hut, Mad Catz, reed pop, and of course, Twitch, today’s event is professionally organized and legitimately marketable.
With recent high-profile launches of video games such as Bungie studio’s Destiny, video games have completed their transformation from niche market to a burgeoning billion-dollar industry that could rival Hollywood. By emulating Hollywood’s more-is-more formula for box-office success, today’s hit video games blast into the scene with bombastic visuals, cinematic camerawork, and A-list celebrity cameos, all supported by their astronomical budgets. As the next generation of game consoles looks to take realism, immersion and interactivity in gaming up to new levels, the video game industry is set to bust more blocks.
As a video ad platform that turns video content into games, Unlockable is using the idea of value exchange to reach users while rewarding them at the same time. The platform was just named a finalist at #NYCSTARTUP, co-sponsored by 212NYC and the New York Times, and will present at Ad Week on September 30th.
What is the Unlockable system?
Consumers aren’t always willing to pay for the content available on sites like Hulu or the Wall Street Journal, but with Unlockable, they can play a game to “unlock” it for free. The viewer clicks the Unlockable button (found alongside payment options) to play a branded game based on branded content—trivia, matching, or anything that allows the user to interact with the ad. Once complete, the content appears, at no financial cost to the user.
How does Unlockable have implications for mobile?
Unlockable also works on mobile games – if a player wants to buy more of something in the game (energy, gold, kittens), a branded game can be played instead of an actual transaction.
What is the advantage of opt-in games?
The key here is “value exchange”: give users something that’s worth their attention. Advertising is a happier and even welcome type of content when it gives the viewer something for their time. The user’s interaction with the brand’s game is a small price for premium content.
Thalmic Labs’ Myo armband is the latest innovation in gesture control: the electromyography-powered armband reads the electrical signals in your arm that cause muscles to contract and translates them to standardized gestures to control digital technologies through Bluetooth. The Lab had a chance to learn more at Tuesday’s NYC! Event, in which Chris Goodine, Thalmic’s Developer Evangelist, discussed the working principles of electromyography, the future of natural user interface technologies, and current and unorthodox use cases for the armband:
Research
At Carnegie Mellon, a project research team is currently testing Myo on Parkinson patients to notify patients when it is time to take their medication. The sensors within the armband can detect early signals of the medication wearing off before symptoms of unintentional movement begin.
Transportation
During PenApps recent college hackathon, a group of programming students unveiled the “Magic Board”, which is control a motorized long board controlled by the Myo.
Gaming
In partnership with Oculus Rift, Thalmic has integrated the armband with Oculus Rift’s virtual reality 3D headset. The combination allows a player to use two Myo armbands to control virtual arms in-game as if they were their own.
As gesture control technology advances, it will be interesting to see how developers integrate the technology across PC, console, and especially virtual games. The Lab is eagerly awaiting its Myo to arrive in the mail so we can start experimenting for ourselves.
In an interesting turn of events, Amazon has officially closed a $970 million deal to acquire Twitch, after Google apparently dropped its billion-dollar bid a month ago. At first glance, the ecommerce giant and the live-streaming game platform have little in common, but a closer examination reveals that Amazon has been courting the gaming market for a while. It makes perfect sense: Twitch was increasingly running into licensing issues as it grew in size, and it needed a big partner to support its development, making Amazon a good fit.
If Google had closed the deal, Twitch would have predictably become YouTube’s “little brother.” At Amazon, however it has the chance to become the video mainstay due to its lack of user-generated or live video platform. And now that the acquisition has been made official, the online video landscape could be radically shifted.
Following the footsteps of Kindle Unlimited, another company is getting Netflixified, as EA Games announces its plan to launch an all-you-can-play monthly subscription plan on Xbox. For just $5 per month and $30 per year, the service, aptly named EA Access, will allow subscribers unlimited access to a “Vault” of games that promises to feature all of EA’s best offerings, including Madden 25, FIFA 14, Battlefield 4, and Peggle 2. It is still early to tell if this move would boost the Xbox sales or disrupt the current business model of the gaming industry, but Steam, another major game distribution platform featuring subscription plans, sure can’t be too happy about this.
Update: Sony has reportedly rejected EA Access for the PS4 after evaluation.
Instead of incarcerating in-app purchases inside the apps, Facebook has decided to break them out of that namesake prison by allowing its desktop games to sell virtual goods straight from ads in the News Feed or sidebar, with the intention to bring this feature to its mobile app in the near future. The move towards mobile, however, could turn out to be challenging, as both iOS and Android forbid in-app purchases to happen outside of their respective app stores, so as to protect their usual 30 percent cut on mobile purchases. Essentially, these would be Facebook’s existing re-engagement ads re-framed for driving immediate purchases, and how they could move over the hurdles to bring this to mobile would be an interesting development to follow.
The most significant development in gaming over the last few years has been the rise of the casual gamer. As eMarketer indicates, it is a category largely defined by the some 147 million US mobile gamers who look to Candy Crush and Fruit Ninja to pass the time. E3 is not about them.
Reserved for the core gamer, E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo is an event where gaming providers both large and small come to Los Angeles to showcase new technologies and products for computers, video game consoles, handheld systems, mobile and social. While the conference is chock full of announcements of new titles from gaming developers, this post will focus on the platforms and behaviors which are changing the way we experience media and gaming. Here are five developments that marketers and media companies should be aware of.
Xbox Snap Encourages Multitasking
Much has been made of second screen experiences which have largely been marketing’s failed attempt to engage the some 60% of people who look at a secondary device during ad breaks according to our Second Screen POV. What we’re seeing currently is a trend towards multitasking on the first screen. YouTube’s mobile UI and more recently Xbox’s continued support of Snap mode are great examples.
Xbox’s Snap function lets users run multiple applications simultaneously, like snapping the Parties app to chat with friends while you’re still playing a game. Voice controls are at the center of this functionality as users can request another application with their voice while still using the controller for gameplay. At this year’s E3, Microsoft announced Snap mode for Achievements which tracks in-game accomplishments while you play. Think of it like a real-time scoreboard with the ability to track and share progress without leaving the game. More interesting is the help function which will scan the web for articles and videos that will offer tips to reach your goals. This is the beginning of media and gaming intersecting as we marry traditional web content and gameplay within a single view.
Amiibo Breathes Life Into NFC?
NFC has tremendous potential to seamlessly connect physical and digital worlds with a simple tap. But with hardware compatibility issues and a lack of consumer adoption, will it go the way of the QR Code? Nintendo thinks not as it is rolling out NFC functionality that connects plastic figures with gameplay to change the way you interact with Nintendo characters and games. Dubbed Amiibo, the platform will debut on select games on the Wii U as players can tap the figures to the Wii U gamepad to bring them to life in the game. In the Super Smash Bros example, you can tap any figure to watch it battle within the game, alongside you or with you simply watching from the sidelines. The characters are all unique and customizable and their gaming history is collected and stored.
Playstation TV Creates A Mobile Living Room
Just when you thought you had a handle on all the over-the-top platforms, Playstation announces the North America release of Playstation TV. The $99 device will stream PS Vita and select PS 3 games to your TV in addition to supporting media services like Hulu and Netflix. More importantly, it enables remote play for current PS4 owners who can stream games to additional TVs without the need to move their main console. This is a serious improvement in mobility and with YouTube coming to the Playstation platform this fall, expect continued growth for Sony’s video game consoles.
Eye Tracking For Gaming Is Just The Start
SteelSeries is showing off its new Sentry Eye Tracker, a device designed to track where a gamer looks while playing. This primary function can offer insights when training for gaming tournaments, but it is promising in a much wider range of fields. Tobii, a Swedish company that supplies the tracking technology for the Sentry, sees its technology being used to assist people with disabilities, conduct academic research, and track attention for market research. It is likely we will soon see PCs coming to market with this sort of technology baked in, so it stands to reason that we will be seeing more and more applications of eye tracking in the next few years.
Twitch And The Rise Of Spectator Gaming
Did you know that video network Twitch has 45 million monthly active users who tune in to watch live streams of people gaming? In fact, there are currently 85,000 tuning into League of Legends right now. Most of these streams are as much about the gameplay as they are about the gamer who simultaneously broadcasts a view of themselves via their webcam. This phenomenon is so prevalent that Google is rumored to be in talks to acquire them for $1 billion.
What Twitch teaches us is the importance of live experiences. In today’s on demand world there is still a desire, likely more than ever to be “in the moment.” There needs to be that sense that if you blink, you’ll miss out which is exactly what Twitch provides to the gaming audience. And Twitch isn’t the exception. In fact, major events are also experiencing growth like the Oscars which has achieved the highest household ratings in nine years. Expect gaming to continue this trend and support more social functionality.
