Fnatic announced today the release of the Fnatic Gear Generation 2 hardware line, marking the next step for pro gaming equipment: the STREAK and miniSTREAK keyboards, as well as CLUTCH 2 and FLICK 2 mice. All products are available now online in the Fnatic Shop, and Amazon Europe, along with Best Buy, which becomes the exclusive US retailer for the products. The development and launch of the Fnatic Gear Generation 2 line of gaming peripherals further emphasizes Fnatic’s mission to lead the world’s fastest growing sport into every household through content, products and experiences. ““It’s been an incredible experience being invested in end-to-end product development of the Fnatic’s Gear Generation 2 line, which took two rigorous years to perfect,” said Felix Guerra, Fnatic Head of R&D and Engineering. “The team spent countless hours listening to feedback from players and fans, to create the product line that’s fully loaded with new features and built-in functionality to give gamers everything they need to perform.”
ReKTGlobal continued to add high-profile investors to its umbrella, announcing that members and management of multiplatinum band Imagine Dragons had joined the roster of owners. In addition to stake in ReKTGlobal, Daniel Platzman and Wayne Sermon of Imagine Dragons join Grammy-nominated artist Steve Aoki as co-owners of ReKTGlobal’s Las Vegas-based esports organization Rogue. “We love gaming and esports and have been looking for new ways to contribute to this community for a long time—but we never found the right fit until now,” said Mac Reynolds, Manager of Imagine Dragons. “We expect to see esports continue its rapid growth internationally, and we think Rogue and ReKTGlobal are the partners who will help make our hometown of Las Vegas the premiere team and gaming event destination.”
76ers Gaming Club announced that Jeff Terrell has been named the team’s first-ever head coach. Terrell will oversee the team’s player management, practice schedule and day-to-day performance.
2018 will see, for the first time ever, the global games industry pull half of its revenue numbers from mobile platforms, according to the latest Global Games Market report from Newzoo. The company forecasts a base of 2.3 billion gamers worldwide who will spend a total of $137.9 billion on games this year, up 13.3% year-over-year. While mobile now taking up the majority of the space, console revenues would reach $34.6 billion for the year for 25% of the total gaming spend, while PCs will contribute $32.9 billion to the total, or nearly 24% of all gaming revenues. “In the span of a decade, mobile gaming will have grown from the smallest segment in 2012 to a 100-billion-dollar industry in 2021,” the company said. “Remarkably, the rise of mobile gaming has not significantly cannibalized revenues from PC or console gaming markets. In the coming years, mobile game revenue growth will continue to outpace the overall games market, growing to $106.4 billion in 2021. By then, smartphone and tablet games combined will generate 59% of revenues in the entire market.”
Superdata reports that Fortnite is now the largest free-to-play console game of all time, in both revenue generated and monthly active users with March seeing the title score the highest conversion rate of any free-to-play PC game in March, generating $223 million across all platforms, 73% from February. Overall, worldwide digital spending in March grew 2%, with consumers spending $8.9 billion globally across all platforms during the month.
Speaking of Fortnite, after taking on the release of the game in China, Tencent is now on the cusp ofalso picking up a chunk of PUBG developer Bluehole. ESPN writes that Tencent is believed to be investing around $470 million into the company, laying claim to a 10% stake in the South Korean developer.
Back to E3 news, Geoff Keighley announced that this year’s gathering will see a tribute to the 20th anniversary of Grim Fandango at E3 Coliseum. The event will include a live read from the full original cast, along with live music, Tim Schafer and more. Fans not in attendance can watch on Facebook Live.
POWER PLAYERS – Twitter’s Rishi Chadha
After unveiling a full lineup of programming at this year’s Newfronts, Twitter continues to bolster its offerings for its legion of gaming and esports fans. Among the announcements are content dedicated to Call of Duty World League, The Game Awards, Gamespot, IEM, and IGN. Cynopsis asked Rishi Chadha, head of gaming content partnerships at Twitter, about the company’s approach to gaming, content and advertisers.
Chadha on Twitter’s approach to gaming: Gaming and Twitter go hand-in-hand. The audience is here talking about everything and that’s only been solidified as time goes on. So to drive the narrative, the four key verticals we are working on here at Twitter are: esports; editorial (with folks like IGN and Gamespot); communities, whether it is content creators or esports teams; and lastly publishers and developers. That’s the way we are shaping all of our content deals and how we are framing partnerships now. You may fall in one or many of those buckets, but those are the distinct verticals we are supporting now. Lastly, while the audience may Tweet about games very well, there are products we offer that they haven’t really utilized yet. I think that is the big focus for me now is educating our partners on that front. Of course, there is still a lot of room for education for advertisers and I think we at Twitter have a very unique opportunity to provide that education because we already have existing relationships around traditional content.
On content: We are unique in the sense that we don’t show just one type of content on our platform. Our deals allow us to be a little more flexible in terms of what we can support. We want to play to the strengths of all of our partners.
On activating through Twitter: Advertisers are still learning that we have this huge audience for gaming. Year-to-date, we have had over 200 million Tweets associated with gaming and there is a huge conversation happening on the platform that I don’t think people are recognizing. The other thing is that looking at other platforms, especially other video platforms, there is more of a “lean back” experience for the user. For us, it is more “lean in” in that people are coming to have more meaningful conversations.
On Call of Duty World League: One of the big deals we announced at the Newfront presentation was the partnership with Activision Blizzard for Call of Duty World League where we will be carrying Call of Duty World League Anaheim, the season two playoffs as well as the World Championships in August. We will have all the clips associated with that and will also bring the shoulder programming that they will be streaming on the platform. There is a huge Call of Duty audience on the platform so this deal made a lot of sense because the content lends itself well to the platform and added to the conversation that was already happening.
On programming: In addition to that, we announced our partnerships with IGN and Gamespot for E3 as well as San Diego Comic-Con. Same thing here, as there was already a lot of chatter happening around those two big event and IGN and Gamespot are leaders and we wanted to work with them. We also announced our renewal with Intel Extreme Masters, extending the partnership we have had with them. Separate from that is our new Esports All-Access Program , where he are working with a lot of the world’s best teams to help them monetize their content and share their content from their perspective, whether it is tournament clips or gameplay.
