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AMD Sponsors Pro Gaming Team
Dillon Hamilton writes "AMD has chosen to sponsor Team NoA, a 6-member professional Counter-Strike team, with their latest hardware along with other unspecified support. NoA (Norwegians of America) is composed of three Norwegian players, two Americans, and one Canadian. All but one of the players (the newest addition and a Norwegian) currently live together in California to practice for the upcoming Cyberathlete Professional League championship tournament in Grapevine, TX, as well as the E-Sports World Cup in Toulouse, France. AMD will presumably be flying Ola Moum, the new member, from his home in Horten, Norway to the States as part of the deal. This is definitely a huge step forward for the concept of professional gaming, not only in the United States but worldwide. With teams like Team 3D and Schroet Kommando getting sponsored by bigger companies, (Subway, NVIDIA, and Shuttle in 3D's case) who knows where this might be in the next few years?"
CS (and all other half life mods) can use HLTV which supports up to 128 spectators, without affecting the match (30-60 second delay, players don't see text, not a bandwidth hog). HLTV can also record the entire match. Gotfrag and other sites host a lot of HLTV demo's from playoff matches. I'm not sure if newer games have an HLTV equivalent yet or not. I'm a nerd.
Actually Pro gaming has already taken off in Korea. This story isn't really news, as AMD, Nvidia and Intel have been supporting Counter-Strike (and various other games) clans for years now. These events are huge in Korea. On the other hand it is slowly gaining momentum here in the US and in Europe which I think is a great thing. I'd much rather watch a game of Warcraft 3, than a game of Football. Personally I think it makes a much better spectator sport. I can't wait for pro gaming to make it to ESPN, maybe then it'll be worth getting all those 100s of sports channels.