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eSports’ popularity is growing fast and while many of the most popular eSports are on PC (e.g DOTA 2 and League of Legends ), it’s Call of Duty that’s leading the way on consoles.
that’s leading the way on consoles. Earlier this week, Treyarch, the developer of, used Gamescom 2015 to announce several new eSports-friendly features.
With the Specialist Draft, Black Ops 3 players can lock in their Specialist of choice, while the Ban and Protect system will allow Black Ops 3 ‘s professional players to ‘ban’ things (such as weapons and perks) to stop the enemy team from using them, or ‘protect’ those that they really want to use.
So although the upcomingeSports changes are being welcomed by the community, questions still remained of where Black Ops 3 ‘s eSports matches will be played. The 2013, 2014, and 2015 Call of Duty World Championships were all sponsored by Xbox, but with Sony recently announcing its Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 partnership, which gives PlayStation players early access to the game’s beta and DLC exclusivity for 30 days, many wondered if the game’s eSports would be changing hands too. eSports fans and players needn’t wonder any more though, because Treyarch has confirmed that PlayStation is the new home of Call of Duty eSports.
With Call of Duty ‘s eSports matches having been played on Xbox consoles for years, understandably, there has been some backlash to the deal. Many have pointed out that the PlayStation Network’s server issues could be a problem as the PSN quite often goes down for either maintenance or due to unexpected outages, leading some players to launch a full campaign to get Sony to fix it. PSN outages could certainly cut into practice times but if they went down in the middle of a professional match, the results could be disastrous.
But on the other hand, some are excited to see what this means for the future of eSports on PlayStation consoles. Previously, Capcom moved the Capcom Pro Tour to PS4 for all of its Western events and last October, Sony also unveiled the PlayStation Official League, an eSports league for PS4. The PlayStation Official League launched in Spain, with plans to expand to Italy and Portugal, but perhaps this Call of Duty eSports deal is a sign that Sony wants to take the PlayStation 4’s eSports potential even further.
Do you think that much will change now that Call of Duty eSports matches are played on PS4? What else can Sony do to help eSports on PS4? Leave a comment and let us know.
Source: Charlie Intel