Hasta La Motion!

Women in Animation (WIA) has announced the launch of The WIA Global Fund, established to broaden the organisation’s international reach by developing and expanding WIA programs and initiatives, all in support of WIA’s goal to achieve 50/50 equality in creative leadership within the animation industry by 2025.

WIA’s goal is to raise $1 million by the third quarter of 2020 in this initial round of fundraising.

An impressive list of major studios, animation companies and private donors from around the world have already banded together to show their support for WIA, raising over $500,000 for the organisation to date.

The Walt Disney Company has led the charge with the highest level of support representing various divisions – including Walt Disney Animation Studios, Blue Sky Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm, Disney Television Animation, Disney Channel and Disney Junior, among others – contributing a collective $100,000 in support of the organization’s global expansion.

WIA Leadership Circle donors supporting at the $25,000 level include (in alphabetical order): Darla Anderson and Kori Rae, Animal Logic, Autodesk, Netflix, Otter Media (a WarnerMedia company, home to Crunchyroll, Rooster Teeth and VRV), Reel FX Animation Studios, Sony Pictures Animation/Sony Pictures Imageworks, Universal/Illumination/DreamWorks Animation and Warner Animation Group/Warner Bros. Animation.

WIA Partners Circle donors supporting at the $10,000 level include (in alphabetical order): Electronic Arts (EA), Jinko Gotoh, Nicole Grindle, Lord Miller, Molly Mason-Boule, Mythos Studios, Nickelodeon, Mark and Kim Osborne, Pearl Studio, Skydance Animation and Virtuos.

WIA Supporters Circle donors supporting at the $5,000 level include (in alphabetical order): Bad Robot, Kristine Belson, Cinesite, Gail Currey, GKIDS, Locksmith Animation, Nexus Studios, SideFX, SPA Studios and Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.

WIA Friends donors supporting at the $2,500 level include (in alphabetical order): Allison Abbate and Tony Cervone, Tamara Boutcher, Duncan Studio, Warren Franklin, Pam Marsden, Paramount Animation, Rideback, and Catherine Winder.

“WIA seeks to harness the energy and strength of a robust donor base to step up our progress worldwide,” said WIA president Marge Dean. “While we are grateful to our dedicated volunteerism that has gotten us this far, we know that greater financial support will allow more sustainable operations in order to achieve our goal of 50/50 by 2025 at the global level.”

WIA vice president and chair of the Global Fund Jinko Gotoh, added, “WIA strives to create belonging for animation. While animation today is a global industry, locality remains vital to our members. We see it both in the workplace and schools, especially as more international people become part of this industry. WIA has come a long way since the relaunch five years ago. We’re very grateful to all the individuals who have given over 40,000 hours of volunteer time and this surge of financial support we recently received from studios, companies and individuals.”

Support from The WIA Global Fund will allow immediate international expansion in the areas of Mentorship, New Chapter Development, and the World Summit series. The crucial uptick of financial backing will also launch the creation of a Virtual Member Community, a Talent Database, and more robust Classroom to Career Support, among other long-anticipated projects. This expansion will be advised by WIA’s new Global Advisory Committee, a group comprised of leaders from various WIA chapters, WIA Leadership Circle Donors and animation studios around the world.

All the founding donors of The WIA Global Fund will be acknowledged as sponsors of the third Women in Animation World Summit this year, which is set to take place this coming Monday, June 10th at the Annecy International Film Festival and Mifa 2019. This year’s Summit will focus on the theme of “Belonging,” which branches out from the context of past Summit focus on diversity and inclusion is described as the feeling of being personally accepted, respected, included and supported in the workplace.

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Scuf Gaming, innovator and creator of high-performance gaming controllers, through its patent subsidiary Ironburg Inventions, has expanded its global patent footprint with additional patents in Europe.

With 77 granted patents and 54 pending patent applications, Scuf Gaming expands its global coverage for Back Control Functions, Trigger Control System, Thumbstick Control Area and side-mounted configurable Sax buttons (S1 and S2).

Scuf Gaming is well-known for creating the category of performance controllers, designing and manufacturing its own controllers as well as licensing its IP to several companies, including Microsoft for the creation of the Xbox Elite Wireless controller.

“Patents take an extremely long time to be granted, sometimes as long as 5 years, so it is gratifying to see the recent acceleration of granted applications to protect our innovations. As a young innovative company, our IP is a core differentiator that allows us to protect our investment and continue to push the boundaries of the next generation of gaming controllers,”  said Scuf Gaming CEO and co-founder Duncan Ironmonger.

SCUF’s patented innovations have benefitted hundreds of thousands of gamers, professional and casual, improving performance, comfort, and customization by enabling users to use more of their hands in a safe and ergonomic way. SCUF features have now become required functionality for esports professionals and competitive gamers.

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For 20 years, Google has worked to put the world’s information at your fingertips. Instant delivery of that information is made possible through their data centre and network capabilities, and now they are using that technology to change how you access and enjoy video games.

Google’s ambitious project of video game streaming service Stadia will be out this year in November as the Google’s VP and General Manager Phil Harrison promised in his keynote at GDC.
Stadia’s creators announced tons of launch details — including pricing, locations, confirmed initial games, a surprise subscription bundle with Destiny 2, and bandwidth requirements.

Stadia Founder’s Edition was also officially made available for pre-order. Initially, the project will be priced at $129.99 through the Google Store. Stadia Founder’s Edition will grant purchaser’s access to Stadia in Nov. 2019. Stadia Base (aka non-paying) customers shouldn’t expect access until sometime in 2020.

The Founder’s Edition purchase comes with a limited-edition Night Blue controller, a Chromecast Ultra, a three-month Stadia Pro subscription, and a three-month Buddy Pass to give a friend access to Stadia Pro — plus, first dibs on Stadia usernames.

Users can rely on that Chromecast Ultra to check out Stadia on a TV, but the platform will also be available on machines that have Chrome — be it a laptop, desktop, and more — as well as on mobile via a Stadia app.

At the time of launch, mobile gaming will be exclusive to Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a smartphones. However, Google has promised to quickly expand from there. Notably, users operating Stadia through Chromecast will need the mobile app for controlling the screen output and making Stadia purchases. That app will be available across iPhone, Android, and most other smartphones.

To enjoy Stadia gaming with the highest quality image and sound, you’ll need Stadia Pro. The subscription service includes streaming with up to 4K HDR image quality and 5.1 surround sound. Additionally, Stadia Pro will offer subscribers access to free games, discounts on games for purchase, and at the time of launch instant access to Destiny 2.

Users who don’t want to pay for a Stadia Pro subscription can wait until 2020, and then once available use Stadia Base for on-demand games purchasing. Stadia Base will allow users to buy, play, and keep whichever games they’d like — with full access to the platform’s flexible screen benefits, at a limited 1080p image.

Stadia will debut in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland in Nov. 2019.

Google has assured users that more regions will be added in 2020, but when and where that will take place has yet to be made public. At present, the platform’s launch lineup of 31 games is fairly diverse. From the previously announced Doom Eternal to Farming Simulator 19, this initial game line-up shows a wide range of genres from a variety of developers — indicating the ever elusive “Netflix of gaming” title may be within reach for Google.

Here are all of the games Stadia confirmed on:

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (Ubisoft), Baldur’s Gate III (Larian Studios), Borderlands 3 (2K), Darksiders Genesis (THQ), Destiny 2 (Bungie), Doom 2016 (Bethesda),Doom Eternal (Bethesda),Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (Bandai Namco),Farming Simulator 19 (Giants Software), Final Fantasy XV (Square Enix), Football Manager (Sega),Get Packed (Coatsink), GRID (Codemasters), Gylt (Tequila Works), Just Dance (Ubisoft), Metro Exodus (Deep Silver), Mortal Kombat 11 (Warner Bros), NBA 2K (2K),Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid (nWay Games), Rage 2 (Bethesda), Rise of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix),Samurai Shodown (SNK), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix), The Crew 2 (Ubisoft), The Elder Scrolls Online (Bethesda), Thumper (Drool), Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint (Ubisoft), Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (Ubisoft), Tomb Raider Definitive Edition (Square Enix),Trials Rising (Ubisoft), Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Bethesda).

Stadia’s creators are recommending players use the platform on a connection with a minimum bandwidth of 10 Mbps. To run 4K HDR images, developers suggest running Stadia on a connection with a minimum bandwidth of 35 Mbps.

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2018 saw the OTT industry reach its pinnacle in the country. With the data revolution initiated by Reliance owned telco, Jio, in early 2016, and extensive sloshing down of the data rates, OTT has become mainstream now.

While the game has upped due to varied content and plethora of original content, distribution remains very crucial for every OTT player in this country; as that’s what makes them reach the masses, be watched, heard, and talked about.

With the rise of OTT content providers, telecom operators have got yet another opportunity to increase their revenues. Telcos themselves had to offer quality content to attract their increasingly video-obsessed customers.

Partnering with Telcos as a key distribution partner is because of their humongous reach with roughly 500 million internet users in the country. The number that is highly likely to grow multi-fold in the next few years and this additional user base is a big opportunity for both OTT players and Telcos to tap that pulse.

All of it started with Reliance Industries picking up a 25 per cent stake in Balaji Telefilms in late 2017, putting in place a content-sharing deal between Reliance Jio and ALTBalaji in early 2018. The partnership required ALTBalaji to make its original shows available on Jio Cinema and Jio TV, thus enabling free access of its content for Jio’s entire user base (160 million then, 280 million at present).

Indian OTT market has about 25 players. Telcos are offering different models in order to cater to the different needs for varied audience. Some offer regional content, some prefer devotional content, Live TV services and more. For instance, Reliance Jio TV has over 550 live TV channels, helping them increase their 4G subscriber base. Airtel TV app offers 300 LIVE TV channels, including 29 HD channels offering 6000 plus movies and regional shows.

In the recent OTTv Mumbai 2019 summit, GoQuest Media director Vivek Lath asserted, “The Telcos have given a very interesting model. Some look for ADs, some look for pay wall. So there are various models coming up for various needs.” Almost 82 per cent of revenue on OTT come from advertising and Telcos are the best platform for that.

ZEE5 India Business Development and Commercial head Manpreet Bumrah added on the similar line, “Gone are those days when people used to consume content only in the evening. Now, they’re consuming content while travelling, or during a snack break, tea break. Now the entire thing has given us a possibility to actually create lot many business engagements. Telcos and mobile phones are great enablers into this thing. Telcos do provide the widest reach. So, we’re offering overall subscription models – be it AVOD or SVOD to Telco audience. People are actually valuing content. And if there’s quality content, they’re paying for it.”

Shemaroo chief operating officer-digital Zubin Dubash, on the other hand focuses on three ‘C’s in mind, for smartly syndicating various content to different Telcos. They’re –  Content, Customer Acquisition and Cost/Content Producers. According to him, “Smart syndication is where the audience knows the source of content. For an example – Shemaroo Me on Vodafone Play.”

Vodafone started driving its RED postpaid users with two months’ worth of free Netflix subscription and a year’s worth of Amazon Prime subscription for specific recharge amounts. The Vodafone Play app also houses content from Eros Now, ALTBalaji and HOOQ.

Airtel too collaborated with Amazon to offer one year’s Amazon Prime membership to all Airtel Infinity Postpaid users and rolled out a Netflix service for a limited period of three months to users with specific postpaid plans. It also signed a strategic partnership with Hotstar to give subscribers access to over 100,000 hours of Hotstar content across live sports, movies and television shows in nine languages on the Airtel TV app. Airtel also provide regional content, of Hoichoi TV.

With the demand of digital content reaching its peak, online video content is thriving and the current gold rush on the Indian market is expected to grow exponentially, as India is predicted to house 640 million internet users and 700 million smartphone users by 2020.

What can be a better news for the telcos and OTT platforms?

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