HTC goes into eSports, home entertainment

HTC is a bit of a strange brand to me. They make some cool things, like their incredible smartphones, but locally they just aren’t as present or visible. That might be changing, though, as they are jumping into the world of eSports, and teasing upcoming products for home entertainment.

HTC is stepping up to the plate with some big sponsorships. Cloud9, Team Liquid and Team SoloMid will all be sporting some HTC loving this year. While eSports sponsorship might be normal for companies like SteelSeries or Alienware, it’s a bit unusual for HTC, especially seeing as they don’t actually make any products that would be used during the eSport events. However, that might change. During CES, HTC chief of design and user experience, Drew Bamford, told The Verge that new things are coming – presumably at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress.

Most exciting for Bamford and company is HTC’s entry into the “connected entertainment” category. “Some of the other stuff may feel evolutionary, but this is a totally new space,” says Bamford, promising to reveal what that means in the first quarter of this year.

This could certain mix things up in eSports – it would be nice to see some new names at these tournaments. I’m certainly curious where HTC will enter the market – they already do phones and tablets, could they be looking to go into smart TVs, or will the experience surprise us?

I’m still waiting for the day when mainstream brands enter the eSports sponsorships market. There aren’t the same rules as traditional sports – why not have teams all sponsored by fast food, booze and cigarette companies? Or how about pharmaceuticals? I’d imagine that the Viagra team could rise through the ranks.

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Last Updated: January 26, 2015