FB lures eSports fans with online portal

Final season of ‘Walking Dead’ arrives on PS4

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10, (Agencies): Facebook on Friday unveiled a portal devoted to streaming video game play and commentary as it ramped up its challenge to Amazonowned Twitch and Google’s YouTube for eSports fans.

Gaming creator program lead John Imah and product manager Nick Miller described the new venue online at fb.gg as a “gaming video destination” that Facebook recently began testing.

“People will be able to discover gaming video on our new destination based on creators and games they follow, pages they like and groups they belong to,” Imah and Miller said in a blog post.

Live and recorded gaming video are aggregated at the social network’s new portal, according to Imah and Miller.

“Many people already watch gaming videos in News Feed, Groups and Pages, and we want to do more to help creators get discovered and reach new fans,” Imah and Miller said.

They also announced new efforts aimed at cultivating and supporting people who create video game related video for viewing online.

Facebook launched a gaming creator program at the start of this year.

Digital content from video game industry events as well as eSports competitions will be among offerings at fb.gg.

“To seed the ecosystem, inspire others, and bring great content to fb.gg, we are funding content from creators and eSports that will also be aggregated in our gaming video destination,” Imah and Miller said.

The announcement comes ahead of the video game industry’s major Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, where Facebook will be showcasing efforts to build a “community for gamers,” according to the statement.

A hot trend of video game play streamed as spectator sport and “YouTubers” becoming famous for skills or pithy commentary was expected to pervade the annual gathering, which will even feature a first-ever celebrity pro-am tournament of raging popular death-match game “Fortnite.”

Last year, unveilings of eagerly awaited titles and new franchises at E3 were streamed live on platforms including Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube — drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Twitch was an eSports pioneer, but faces increasing pressure from Facebook and YouTube as ranks of eSports viewers grow along with the money to be made from audiences.

The final season of Telltale’s “The Walking Dead” will premiere on Aug 14. Scott Butterworth, creative communications specialist at Telltale Games, announced the news in an Xbox Wire post on Friday.

Like the television show of the same name, “The Walking Dead” is based on the comicbook series by Robert Kirkman and tells the story of those surviving in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. Players who pre-order the Xbox One edition of the game’s last season between now and the release of the first episode will also receive “The Walking Dead Collection” — containing all 19 previous episodes in the series — for free right away.

The fourth and final season centers on the story of Clementine, introduced in the game’s first season. “When ‘The Final Season’ picks up, Clem has spent years on the road facing threats both living and dead,” Butterworth’s blog post reads. “A secluded school might finally be her chance for a home, but protecting it will mean sacrifice. Clementine must build a life and become a leader while still watching over AJ, an orphaned boy and the closest thing to family she has left. Ultimately, your decisions will determine how her story ends.”

More of the game will be shown off at E3 during Mixer’s live show on June 12 at 12 p.m. PT.

Team Ninja announced a new mainline “Dead or Alive” title on Friday.

The next entry in the long-running series of fighting games — which began with the “Dead or Alive” arcade cabinet in 1996 — will ship for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The previous installment, “Dead or Alive 5: Last Round,” came out in 2015.

In a hands-on preview for IGN, the game’s director, Yohei Shimbori, insisted that the game will retain the series’s familiar gameplay while pushing the property forward in other ways. “It can feel disappointing if a game you used to enjoy no longer feels familiar, so we didn’t want to change the core mechanics,” Shimbori said. But female characters, for instance, are intended to be less sexually objectified than in the past. “The female characters are still attractive, as are the men,” said art director Yutaka Saito, “but first and foremost they are fighters.”

More news about the game is expected to be revealed at E3 on June 11.

Though probably best known for their contributions to the “Dead or Alive” series, Team Ninja is also the developer behind “Ninja Gaiden,” “Hyrule Warriors,” and “Nioh,” which was released for PlayStation 4 and Windows in 2017. The studio is a division of Koei Tecmo.

“Dead or Alive 6” will launch early in 2019.

Backers of action-RPG ‘Indivisible’ will find new enemies and quests to conquer in the updated beta demo, available for immediate download, according to developer Lab Zero.

The title received enthusiastic support from fans of Lab Zero, creators of the cult-hit “Skullgirls,” and earned over $2.2 million at the close of the game’s Indiegogo campaign in January. Now fans will have a chance to see their support pay off in the beta and in a new E3 2018 trailer.

“Indivisible” follows tomboy Ajna, who has suddenly gained a mysterious power in which she can absorb other people, and uses this new ability to take on the warlord who has attacked her town.

In the updated demo, Ajna is joined by three new playable characters: Nuna the plantsummoner, Latigo the gunslinger and Baozhai the pirate queen.

Backers will also have the chance to fight a new hybrid boss, Pindayar, in which they will switch between classic turn-based RPG fighting and platforming action.

In May, Lab Zero announced on their official blog that the official release of ‘Indivisible’ will be delayed until 2019.

“While we did everything we could to prevent this from happening, the simple reality is that ‘Indivisible’ ended up being a much larger project than we could have anticipated when the game was conceived way back in 2015,” the blog post stated. “A number of other issues related to shipping a product of this size contributed to this decision, but the main issue is just the sheer number of assets this game requires and the time needed to deliver them at the quality you expect from a Lab Zero game.”

“Paladins: Champions of the Realm” is coming to Nintendo Switch on June 12. HiRez Studios, the game’s developer, announced the news with a trailer and blog post on Wednesday.

The online hero shooter runs at 60 frames per second, offering “the full ‘Paladins’ experience” in both handheld and docked modes. It will support cross-platform play between the Switch and Xbox One populations.

A “Founder’s Pack” edition of the game is available to purchase in the Nintendo eShop for $29.99, but Hi-Rez also plans to release a free-to-play version on Switch later this summer. The Founder’s Pack includes all 36 existing hero characters and their voice packs, along with any future heroes, as well as a number of founder-exclusive cosmetic items.