OK, so I know the college football season technically started last week. But let’s be clear -- the season doesn’t really start until the Appalachian State Mountaineers kick off this Saturday.
Joking aside, this season, the first with a 12-team College Football Playoff, brings some real excitement for fans like me. App State, my alma mater, is in the conversation most years as a top Group of Five team. With the G5 guaranteed a spot in the bracket, a friend and I have already decided to get tickets if the Mountaineers have enough magic to make it.
And if the only App State national title comes via my dynasty mode on EA Sports College Football 25, so be it. I’ll still love them anyway. There’s always next year.
StatusPro takes its VR game to the next level
Pick just one of the enhancements coming to this year’s version of the virtual reality game NFL Pro Era , and it’s probably enough to generate significant excitement from players:
- Playing linebacker in a game that featured a quarterback-centric experience in its first two installments.
- An AI enhancement that makes both nonplayer teammates and opponents smarter, meaning more realism and less frustration of quirky glitches.
- More creative options for customizing appearances of players and stadiums.
Instead, game developer StatusPro is tackling them all -- that’s right, I used a football pun -- in a marked step forward.
The upcoming third installment of NFL Pro Era, which is licensed by the NFL and NFLPA, will come out later this year for the Meta Quest VR headset. It’s shifting to a live service model (think Madden NFL or NBA 2K) and received a serious boost from AI to make it more reactive to the player’s performance.
"I wish I could tell you it wasn’t arduous,” said the company’s chief product officer Victor Lugo of all the enhancements. “But we really set out to transform the game and really turn it into what we consider to be the definitive version of the game.”
Lugo said the company worked intently to make sure certain traits of play, like locomotion and player interactions, felt consistent in both the offensive and defensive views. To get those right, StatusPro ran through constant AI simulations of play to scrub out any bugs.
The AI-boosted teammates and opponents came from the creation of an internal, context-based system that responds to the player, which Lugo said is referred to in-house as the Drift System. The best example of this -- if a player is leading an offense as a quarterback, and they have led back-to-back drives of three-and-outs, that player might hear from his boisterous wide receiver in the pre-snap huddle to give him the ball more.
A labor of feedback and vision
Lugo shared that the live service model came with a re-architecture of the game, preparing a new user interface and experience to handle upgrades, add-ons and roster updates that will come throughout the season. The boosted experience, according to StatusPro co-founder and CEO Troy Jones, was equal parts vision from the company’s founding mission paired with player feedback as companies like Meta and Apple continue to navigate spatial computing and create new VR experiences.
“The goal is just to continue to innovate in the space,” Jones said. “So I think whenever you're a first mover, you got to find this blend between what is the vision that you have to innovate and disrupt, coupled with the feedback that you're getting from consumers as you launch a product.”
Earlier this year, Status Pro closed a $20 million Series A funding round that was led by Google Ventures and became a 2024 cohort member of the Disney Accelerator Program . Jones called those investments the “gasoline on the fire” for the work on this year’s version and beyond, continuing a course to eventually create a game that can support 11-on-11 football. Jones also mentioned a desire to someday expand to other sports, but right now, StatusPro is focused on developing the most complete football game it can.
"This is going to be the best title we've launched to date, and we're excited to just continue this franchise and keep it going with them” Jones said. “The plan is to be here for a long, long time to continue to build compelling experiences and expand upon the game that innovates the way people can play.”
Powersoft making moves in audio amplification space at sports venues
Powersoft is a professional audio services company that’s become a fixture in sports. Since 2022, Powersoft has been involved in approximately 30 venue projects with customers throughout the major men's professional leagues and college ranks, according to Powersoft U.S. Business Development Manager Thomas Howie.
That includes some of the cutting-edge spaces for immersive experiences like Cosm, which will open its second location on Saturday in Dallas for Week 1 of the college football season. Cosm’s two locations -- the other being its first spot in Hollywood Park, Calif. -- both use multiple Powersoft third-generation amplifiers, Unica. The company declined to share specific numbers in those venues.
Howie said Powersoft has been a pioneering figure for Class D audio amplification, an amp focused on energy efficiency without sacrificing sound quality. “We have the ability to really fit a lot of power into a small rack unit space,” Howie told SBJ. “So, we take up less space, we run more efficiently, better thermal conditioning -- we actually save power.”
Along with Cosm, Powersoft hardware resides in the monolith of immersive entertainment -- the Sphere in Las Vegas, which hosted its first sports-specific event in June with the NHL Draft . Sphere is a non-stop spectacle that’s only grown in intrigue with a concert lineup of U2, Dead & Co. and Phish with stunning visuals provided by its 160,000-square-foot LED display.
Powersoft’s contribution to Sphere was 718 Quattrocanali amplifiers, as well as a piece of haptic tech called Movers, which are on 10,000 of the Sphere’s 18,600 seats.
Recently, Powersoft was part of the sound system upgrade at the Giants’ Oracle Park, a project overseen by systems integration specialist Diversified. The project featured nearly 50 pieces of Powersoft hardware. Powersoft was founded in Italy and is approaching 30 years of business.
Speed reads
- This week's magazine details how the PBR's Austin Gamblers use tech to improve their lineups.
- SBJ announced its sixth class of New Voices Under 30 in this week's magazine, and it includes several people working in and around sports tech, such as CAMB.AI's Akshat Prakash, SeatGeek's Dante Smith and Meta's Becca Wathen.
- BetMGM retooled its app to make its parlay options on par with that of its competitors, as SBJ's Bill King writes for the magazine this week.
- Smart basketball hoop manufacturer huupe is releasing its second product, the huupe mini, reports my SBJ colleague Rob Schaefer, a smaller-sized iteration that's a more portable and affordable option for consumers while offering similar technology.
- The semipro women’s counterpart to the Australian Football League is introducing Sportable’s in-ball sensor to help officiating for the 2024 season, using the tech to determine when the ball crosses the goal line, hits the post or is deflected in flight, writes my SBJ colleague Joe Lemire.
- The 2024 edition of the Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator will end this week with capstone presentations at the Rally Innovation Conference in Indianapolis, reports Schaefer. The 10 companies selected to the cohort secured 15 pilots, partnerships and commercial deals during the six-month program.