The B/R Weekly Rushdown: August 10, 2016
After a couple of weeks of celebration about what has happened or what is happening, the Bleacher Report Weekly Rushdown now changes gears to focus on what is coming up! Let's begin.
Pokemon World Championships Become Much Bigger
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The Pokemon Championship Series has a whole lot of problems...but a lacking prize pool is no longer one of them. According to The Daily Dot's Samuel Lingle, the PCS's structure is getting a major overhaul alongside a substantial injection of cash.
Starting this year, national qualifiers will be done away with in favor of continent-based qualifiers for regions including Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific with $250,000 in prizes for each.
What's more, there will be other qualifiers dotted throughout the year which are open to all comers.
All these qualifiers are designed to distribute points toward eligibility for the Pokemon World Championships, which had a prize total of $500,000 last year.
How these prizes will be distributed, what percentage of the prizes will be cash, scholarships, trips or anything else, and how they will be split between the Pokemon video game tournaments and Pokemon Trading Card Game is all currently unknown.
Either way, The Pokemon Company is making the right moves to crack into the eSports world proper.
The International 2016 Has Been Spectacular
TI6, the world's largest Dota 2 tournament which features a record-breaking $20 million prize pool, has been an absolute treat to watch. Broadcasting live on Twitch.tv, fans have been treated to exciting, unpredictable action throughout.
On Tuesday, tournament favorites OG were sent packing by the unheralded Filipino team TnC Gaming. OG was sent to the lower bracket of the tournament by South Korea's MVP Phoenix a day earlier, and its departure has left an open throne for anyone to slide into.
On top of that storyline has been a renaissance for both fan-favorites-turned-heels Evil Geniuses and Chinese throwbacks EHOME as well as a number of strong runs from underdogs.
The action is ongoing, so make sure to check it out on Twitch.tv or the official Dota 2 YouTube channel.
World eSports Games Qualifiers Beginning Soon
Been enjoying the Olympics? Well, what if there was an eSports version of the Olympics offering nation-based tournaments across a number of titles with an enormous prize pool (which I guess isn't really like the Olympics, come to think of it)?
Well, look no further than the World Electronic Sports Games!
The Alisports-led tournament (Alisports being the sports-based offshoot of Chinese hedge fund Alibaba Group that recently invested in the International e-Sports Federation) will offer an Olympics-like experience in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Hearthstone and StarCraft II with qualifiers kicking off next week.
It's an exciting, ambitious undertaking that has plenty of ways to go wrong, but if it goes right, it could change the game for eSports.
The main tournament will begin in December in Shanghai, China, so expect more coverage around that time.
Delta Airlines KOs Justin Wong
In addition to TI6 this week, there were a number of different tournaments and events for the fighting game community...oh, and there was also a cataclysmic airline outage as Delta grounded 740 flights due to a power outage at a data center knocking its computer systems out across airports.
Obviously, that's not a winning combination, and legendary fighting gamer Justin Wong ended up having a tough Monday because of it. Here is his story, told through tweets:
Rumor: 'StarCraft HD' Announcement Coming?
Competitive gaming has been around since Taito put the first "High Score" tracker into a Galaga arcade cabinet, but eSports? That started in 1998 when StarCraft turned the gaming world upside down.
While that title holds a special place in both history and the hearts of gamers, it could hold a special place on hard drives once again before too long.
According to Korea's iNews 24 (via PVPLive), a remake of the classic real-time strategy game could be coming down the pipeline: "Today, multiple sources with knowledge of Blizzard internal plans said that Blizzard will reveal StarCraft HD to the public this September. The StarCraft HD remastered version will retain the original gameplay and is said to have improved graphics resolution and user interface (UI)."
StarCraft was a truly revolutionary title, and it's easy to feel both excited and just plain happy about it getting a modern reinvention. Nearly 20 years old now, StarCraft actually holds up remarkably well, and with a few modern sensibilities added, it could once again retake the eSports world.
Of course, this is just a rumor. Even then, it's only a rumor about an announcement being made to reveal the title.
So don't get excited, gamers...yet.
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