This year, behind every X-Games star’s couch, there’s a room full of fancy videogame design and development studios and marketers, poring over the latest buzz-y game platform, looking for the next big franchise that will pull in legions of new digital players. X-Games, when you think about it, was almost a very Victorian sort of market research, and yet, it has always been a shadow of its more tech-centric archrival, the World Cup of G-Sports (and beyond).
Digg, Chris Hardwick’s comment network for gaming discussion, is seeking to change that with its just-launched X-Games Hellbound, a game idea incubated at the company that will be focused solely on developing and marketing games created using the Google Home platform. X-Games—now in its fourth year—serves as the home of the xGames brand and marquee X-Games events, including the Street Fight competition.
This new program hopes to draw new players to the web as well as give developers a platform to try out and experiment with new game concepts.
“For [our] industry, X-Games is the one platform that’s fundamentally accessible to thousands of players across millions of products,” said Hardwick in a statement. “[It’s] not just an event, but the place where gaming launches. Hellbound provides an extension of the brand and, frankly, it’s a place where X-Games learns more about gaming than most publishers can, which we think will not only improve the industry but open up new opportunities for our team to make video games.”
H/t / Damn Geekery