I recently had the opportunity to attend the Intel® Extreme Masters (IEM) Championship in Katowice, Poland, which hosts some of the world’s best PC-based eSports games and talent. The growing phenomenon of eSports has captured the hearts and minds of avid gamers and spectators around the globe. The numbers are staggering: Along with the 173,000+ fans who attended in person, the live stream reached 46 million unique viewers across the globe in 19 languages, making IEM Katowice the biggest event in eSports history. And for the first time, 340,000 unique viewers tuned into the VR Tournament Live Broadcast.
We’re kicking off IEM Season 12 in Sydney, Australia, in May, bringing the heritage of eSports’ longest running tournament to more players and fans. Intel has been in the thick of gaming well before competitive gaming was named eSports. And it’s been something else to watch competitions grow from 10 players to 100 players at local events, to now millions around the world.
We know gaming and, over the years, we’ve continued demonstrating our commitment to it by delivering CPUs and platforms that push the boundaries of performance to unprecedented levels. For these fans and gamers who are all in, nothing less than the best performance PCs will do to power through the demands of gaming, streaming and VR. It’s what we do best and it’s what we tirelessly work on each day because we know today’s games – and gaming experiences of the future like VR – depend on it.
