TALKESPORT

After months of lockdown, countries are slowly easing up restrictions and allowing certain activities to start-up in limited fashion following strict precautions and guidelines. As such the European governments have also allowed live sports events and league to followup and start in a limited fashion.

The Premier League, often referred to as the English Premier League or the EPL, is returning after a long three-month pause caused due to the emergency Coronavirus Lockdown. The English Premier League will return on 17th June with the teams playing in empty stadiums due to safety precautions.

With large crowds and gatherings forbidden the sports leagues will continue competitions in empty stadiums and arenas filled with nothing but silence. For avid sports fans and viewers, this setup may feel unnatural and might tick some people off from viewing the league.

To combat this issue, Sky Sports partnered up with EA Sports FIFA to include a range of bespoke and team-specific crowd noises and chants to bring the vibrant atmosphere of the Premier League to the viewers sitting at home. Sky Sports has also introduced a number of other new features that a viewer can use to further enhance their viewing experience.

One such feature is called “Sky Sports Fanzone”, where viewers can join a lobby and watch select matches with friends in a video room and interact with each other in realtime while the action unfolds, giving them the chance to chat about the match and influence the crowd noise they hear on screen.

Announcing these new features, Sky Sports managing director Robert Webster said:

“With live sport on hold for over two months, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we broadcast in new ways to bring fans together, even if they can’t meet up to watch the match.”

“Sky has always been a leader in innovative sports broadcasting, and we’re excited by this opportunity to share something really special with the whole nation. We want Sky Sports viewers to still feel it all and have the best possible viewing experience – even if they can’t be in the stadiums or watch with their family and friends.”

Following this example, other leagues are also considering to include crowd noises and fake cheers in their live broadcast to enhance viewing experience of viewers at home as Coronavirus precautions won’t allow stadiums to open-up for audiences.

Pictures of GeForce RTX 3080 have surfaced online through a forum called Chiphell, Videocardz.com reported. The photographs appears to be prototypes of RTX 3080 which hasn’t been officially revealed yet by NVIDIA.

The cards appear to not have reached the final stage of production completion, but it looks like they’re captured in one of the divison of the assembly lines during manufacturing. RTX 3080 seems to have a two-fan open design with a currently-visible heatsink, which probably will be covered in the next stages of production. Some users also pointed out the change in color scheme, which apparently isn’t the case.

The visible blue section of the cards are plastic wraps on metals beneath. NVIDIA RTX 3080 is likely to be on the green side of the branding even for this one.

The PCB also appears to have an unusual shape, as @cloudol and Videocardz presented.

Despite NVIDIA not officially announcing any launch dates of the cards, the fact these pictures reveals assures that it may arrive sooner than we expect. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 will feature an Ampere-based GPU.

The card could feature up to 4,352 CUDA cores, 10 GB of VRAM and a 320-bit bus, making it a pretty strong range in its 3XXX series, which is expected to land in Q3 2020.

Coronavirus have devastated most of the economic industries worldwide, except a few. From luxurious fashion brands to premium hospitality, the future is uncertain for most, but not for esports. Esports, as per this report by AutoSport have achieved two years of success in two months.

Motorsport Network has hosted Esports discussions alongside the #ThinkingForward series with focus turning to sim racing during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdown, which has meant Esports has taken center stage.

While talking points have proven to be both positive and negative, from a range of Esports charity fundraising events, including the BRDC Esports series to raise money for the NHS, to Daniel Abt being dropped by Audi for pulling off a Formula E Esports stunt, a panel of experts hosted by James Allen analysed the Esports developments within the motorsport environment and what the future holds.

Leeston Bryant, McLaren senior marketing manager covering Esports, estimates the industry itself has experienced dramatic market growth by taking the opportunity to fill the void of motorsport action during the COVID-19 postponements.

“The biggest thing we are all experiencing is Esports being in the public consciousness in a way that it wasn’t,” Bryant said.

“My mum asked me if I had anything to do with footballers playing Formula 1, while my next door neighbour is also asking about McLaren in Esports. “I have been working in Esports for two years and while it has been growing that whole time, we have seen two years’ worth of growth in two months.

“I think that is incredibly exciting and I think what we are trying to do is make sure we take that forward into the future.”

F1 has duly ramped up its own Esports efforts, launching the Virtual Grand Prix series which features current F1 drivers competing against former racers, celebrities and sports stars from other disciplines, and has enjoyed similar expansion and fan engagement.

Julian Tan, who heads F1’s Esports initiatives, has echoed the sentiments but remains curious to understand how the recent rise of sim racing will integrate into the wider motorsport market once real racing can resume.

“We are seeing a much higher growth rate in sim racing against the rest of the industry so I think the potential is there,” Tan said during the Esports webinar.

“I think the impact the coronavirus has had on the world and when we pass this, and we will pass this, the world that we will enter will look very different.

“I do think that the growth and attention that gaming and Esports is experiencing now will have an impact post-COVID-19.

“I think it is difficult to say or see what that impact is, but what I do know is that the fact that all of us here are navigating the space right now and we are learning a tremendous amount, doing things, trying things differently and we will emerge from this better prepared to tackle the new challenges that we will have.

“Whether we will see the Virtual GPs as we are seeing them now once we go back racing, I think it is too early to say, but I do think there will be elements of the Virtual GPs that we could potentially start to implement more widely on our Esports programme and the wider sport too.”

With sponsors eager to maintain a greater presence in the motorsport market through the new and emerging channels, Bryant believes McLaren’s partners have also seen opportunities that can be grabbed through Esports activities when the normal racing season returns.

“Speaking to McLaren F1’s sponsors about Esports, there are a few conversations about when motorsport starts up again maybe when there are breaks and in the off-season we can start to bring these activities back, so we can keep racing fans entertained 24-7,” he said.

“I think we live in a world now when people are almost expected to be always on.

“So, we want to see how we can give fans an additive experience. “I think Esports and sim racing might be able to do that.

“It won’t quite be potentially at the same level it is now but I think it will have a profound effect for years to come.”

Generated through a syndicate feed, no editorial teams were a part of this. Sourced from: ThinkForward, AutoSport

New Delhi, May 27, 2020: While the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown has disrupted the growth trajectories of brands across industries, ASUS India has defied the prevalent norms and registered exceptional growth during this period. Recent data by IDC has revealed that ASUS has garnered 15% market share in the consumer notebook segment as of Q1 2020.

The brand has witnessed a 40% jump in sales in Q1 2020 as compared to Q4 2019. While the overall laptop consumer market in India declined by almost 26.5% in Q1 2020 as compared to Q4 2019, this comes as a remarkable feat for ASUS.

In the weeks following the sequential relaxation of the lockdown, ASUS has successfully recovered more than 90% of its national sales as compared to pre-COVID 19 phase. Driving this hyper-growth is the increasing demand for high-quality, feature-rich laptops to support the work/study-at-home mandate, bolstered by the rising penchant for online gaming while individuals practice social distancing at home. In line with these trends, ASUS has seen a steady rise in the demand for its ROG and Thin & Light laptop segments.

Speaking on the developments, Arnold Su, Business Head, Consumer & Gaming PC, System Business Group, ASUS India said, “India has always been an important market for ASUS hence investments and growth strategies have been in sync. Our efforts have always been to expand our base and reach out to as many people possible to make technologically advanced and affordable laptops available to them.”

“Post the lockdown has been relaxed in some geographies the pickup pace of our products has been phenomenal, so much so that we expect sales to surpass average sales in the coming weeks. It is heartening to see our brand playing a key role in ensuring smooth work/study-at-home and enthralling gaming experiences for individuals during this challenging situation.”

ASUS aims to cross the 20% market share by the end of Q3 and a lofty 23%-25% by the end of Q4 2020. To continue this growth trajectory, ASUS is set to launch an array of new products while expanding its offline presence from 100 stores to 200 stores by the end of 2020. With concerted efforts in terms of enhancing its product portfolio and refining consumer experience, ASUS aims to emerge among the top 3 brands in the consumer laptop segment by the end of 2020.