Blog

For those that don't know, the big Shaq from NBA fame has started to invest in a North American eSports team named NRG. Shaq recently shared some of his feelings for eSports and shared why he has such a passion for it.

The biggest reason Shaq has a soft spot for eSports can be summed up in one simple word. "Teamwork." It's clear that this is something that Shaq knows well, "Five guys working together, practicing together, trusting your brother. That's what makes a winner. It's a grind. It takes big time dedication to be the best and build a winner."

It's not just the teamwork side of things that both eSports and NBA share, though.

"The fans did it for me," Shaq mentioned. "The fan base is huge and so passionate about their favorite games, teams and players. We have seen this movie before with the NBA and other traditional sports leagues. Sponsors and distribution always follow."

"I got to witness first-hand at CES this year how exciting the CS:GO world had become

Thanks to extended support through crowdfunding, Capcom has managed to bump up the Capcom prize cup by an additional $90,000.

The new Capcom cup prize funding comes from the Capcom Pro Tour DLC pack. Featuring CPT costumes and a CPT stage, a portion of the revenue from the DLC pack was promised to be invested into the 2016 Capcom cup.

It's now been confirmed that so far the initial $250,00 prize pool will be increased by an additional $90,000 thanks to the Capcom Pro Tour DLC pack. According to Capcom, they believe they'll be able to add roughly an additional $60,000 by November, which will make a total of $150,000 from the DLC pack.

This will also mean that the full prize pool will sit at $400,000.

For those that are interested, Capcom has confirmed that 30 percent of the Capcom Pro Tour DLC revenue will go straight into the prize pool, while 50 percent will go straight towards the product of the Capcom Pro Tour. By that logic, roughly $250,000 will go towards

John Takeuchi is a Street Fighter player that came into the spotlight from out of nowhere. Now, Takeuchi is reaching his next from support from the /r/kappa subreddit again.

r/kappa is a subreddit on the website reddit which is filled with a community of dedicated Street Fighter fans. The community has often come together to fund trips for different players in the past and recently they have taken it upon themselves to 'sponsor' John Takeuchi.

The last event that the community at /r/kappa funded for John Takeuchi was the 2016 First attack tournament. Takeuchi took the funding honorably, absolutely smashed the competition and came out on top with a victorious win against GO1 in two best of three series in the grand finals.

Now that John Takeuchi has landed back on home turf, the /Kappa crowd are looking to fund John Takeuchi again. This time, Takeuchi needs $950 to get to The Fall Classic 2016 event in Raleigh, North Carolina. With Takeuchi being on the other side of

A new Overwatch update has made it to the public test realm and it should soon be travelling to the live servers for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The new update will include a number of changes, including improvements for spectator mode and custom games for eSports, balancing to a number of heroes and some overall fixes and user interface changes.

The most important changes are definitely the adjustments made to three heroes; Junkrat, Widowmaker and Ana. The changes can be seen below.

Ana
Nano Boost
- Ultimate cost has been increased by 20%

Biotic Grenade
- Radius has been increased from 3 to 4 meters

Developer Comments: So far, we haven’t seen any indication that Ana is too strong overall, but her ultimate charges a little too fast, especially considering the impact it can have on a match. Also, her Biotic Grenades are getting a small boost to help her hit multiple targets.

Widowmaker
Widow's

A brand new Mafia 3 trailer has been released by 2K Games and it features a range of interesting gameplay scenes.

This particular new trailer focuses on the variety of weapons that will be available in Mafia 3. It's clear that the different weapon choices players will have in Mafia 3 will mark an important aspect of gameplay for the entirety of a playthrough.

At the beginning, the trailer focuses on a number of different pistols and hand-to-hand weapons, such as knives and bayonets. Quickly the trailer progresses onto a much larger arsenal and around the 0:30 mark a huge collection of weapons can be seen. Pistols, sniper rifles, assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers and SMGs can be seen flying by.

Hopefully players will be able to choose which weapons they'd like to use at any point in the game - with such a wide variety of weapons, from 9mm pistols to LMGs and rocket launchers, there's certainly a lot of choice available.

The weapon select interface may

Titanfall 2 is going to land on October 28, but there is still a lot we're learning about the game every day.

This week we learned that Titanfall 2 will have a new game mode that'll see one player fight it out against another in a 1v1 arena. The game mode will require tickets for entry and winning the 1v1 events will reward players with huge rewards, apparently that'll trump rewards from "anywhere else in the game."

Whilst players will be able to earn tickets for the 1v1 arena by playing the standard multiplayer modes, there will be a number of promotional deals running that'll give players more chances to enter into the arena to earn rewards.

One of the first promotional deals will be running with Mountain Dew - buying a bottle of any Mountain Dew drink in promotional areas will land players an extra ticket. Tickets will also be available from promotional Doritos packs. On top of the promotional 1v1 mode, rewards will be available for any players that eat at Buffalo

Could Gears of War be the next big competitive console game?

With Gears of War eSports gaining more traction, more organizations are starting to pick up Gears teams. In recent happenings, NRG has now picked up their own Gears of War team. The team will compete in upcoming North American events, including the ESL Pro League.

The new Gears of War team has seen a number of different players come together for the first time, but it’s certain that all of the players on the new NRG squad have the potential to do well.

"Long-time teammates Sleepytime and Sicamore, who placed 4th together in both seasons of the ESL Pro-League, are joined by their season 1 teammate Twist3DShot, season 2 teammate Xcells, and; Franko, who placed 4th in the recent Gears eSports North American Open with GOONZ, to create a roster that could prove to have the experience, synergy, and balance of skill-sets to excel in Gears 4. With every member boasting top 4 finishes, the new NRG squad proved to be

Finally, we have some great news about competitive Destiny.

After what felt like a lifetime, Activision teamed up with MLG to showcase an MLG event, which was streamed live on the Twitch platform. Because competitive Destiny hadn't been around until now, the MLG event saw 12 of the best PVP players team up and fight against each other. The teams were split as follows:

Alpha Team:
Luminosity
Bodies
Viole
SirDimetrious
TripleWRECK
SayWallaHBruh

Bravo Team:
nKuch
Lil Sonic
iFrostBolt
KJHovey
TrueVanguard
RealKraftyy

After the MLG event, which was shown as a best of five match, Bungie announced that private match functionality will be coming to Destiny. The new private match feature should be live this week and it will allow players to set up competitive PVP leagues, cups and more. The private PVP functionality will also allow friends to gather up together for a bit of fun outside

Out of nowhere, OpTic Gaming has signed on the old CLG Halo roster to bag themselves a star player team for future Halo events.

The CLG organization previously saw a lot of great results with their Halo team, especially during the Halo 5 eSports era. Their best accomplishments included a win at Halo World Champions and a win at season 1 of the HCS Pro League. It's no doubt then that OpTic Gaming had taken an interest in picking the team up.

If you're a fan of the CLG organization, this may be disappointing news for you, but if you're a fan of the Halo team that was representing CLG, then this change in the Halo scene should only mean good things. The entire team has been transferred over - SnakeBite, Lethul, Royal 2 and Frosty are all going to be a part of the same team still, just from now on they'll be donning OpTic jerseys.

Because of the rules set out by the Halo Pro League, this acquisition will also mean that OpTic will take CLG's spot in season 2 of the Halo

A Major PlayStation 4 system update has just launched and should be rolling out to all regions that support the PS4 as we speak. The new PS4 update brings a number of changes to the user interface that many PlayStation owners will be happy to find out about.

Firstly, a more refined experience has been added to the main UI with thanks to new system backgrounds, updated system icons and revised pop up notifications and drop down menus to make it easier to navigate through everything.

Another great change is the adjustments made to the Quick Menu. The new Quick Menu will now no longer take up the entirety of the screen, which means you can still pay attention to what's happening in your game or on your PS4 system and still access the Quick Menu at the same time.

The Quick Menu also has an improved music player app - you can now quickly skip songs and change music via the USB music player or Spotify app. Sony has also attempted to make it so that the Quick Menu options