Undead Astronauts

in what may be a looked back upon as a watershed event, level|up and G4 will be teaming w/ capcom to stream this year’s EVO events, and will broadcast a special edition of X-Play on July 20th devoted to EVO 2010. the production will be by the guys at level|up, which is run by fighting great alex valle.

from level|up:

All three days of tournament action will be streamed live on the Internet. To produce the live stream, EVO has partnered with Level|Up, universally renowned for their pro-gaming broadcast expertise and ability to make all the amazing on-screen action accessible to a global audience.

from g4 (actually the same stream run by level|up):

Beginning at 9:00am PT July 9th, G4TV.com, powered by Stickam, the first live streaming video network, will offer unprecedented access to the EVO 2010 world championships with 45 hours of non-stop live streaming coverage. The exclusive stream will feature tournament matches between top players, with live crowd audio accompanied by expert commentary to explain all the onscreen action. This streaming event will run from the start of the tournament on July 9th through the finals on July 11th.

…

On Tuesday, July 20 at 6:30 pm, a special episode of “X-Play”, TV’s most watched videogame show, will be completely devoted to EVO 2010. X-Play vs. Capcom: EVO 2010 World Fighting Finals will delve into the legacy of Capcom’s legendary fighting games, and give viewers an all-access look at the history of EVO as it’s developed from a fledgling format to a mega-successful fighting institution.

…

This year’s coverage is unlike anything ever presented before, and marks an ongoing commitment from G4 to employ both on-air and online strategies to provide fans with the most complete and explosive gaming coverage anywhere.

i’ll embed the stream here when it goes live. but wow… G4. even though i hate comcast for what they’ve done to the network (and their horrible broadband service and asinine policies), i’ve got to give G4 and comcast credit for giving attention to this tourney. the handling of this tourney is in stark contrast to the ESWC tourney happening right now in france. for a large international tournament, the only streaming available is for quakelive and stream commentary is being done stateside! that’s pretty sad for an activity that imagines itself as a sporting event.

as for X-Play, i wonder if they’ll have enough time to do justice to the various storylines that all culminate at each evo. there’s the (now somewhat diminished) east coast vs west coast story, there’s the (now somewhat hyped) perpetual underdog US vs godlike japan story, and of course the biggest story of whether jwong and daigo will rematch in the grand finals. i can’t imagine the hype in the auditorium if it really came down to that again, but it will be much tougher this year b/c of the increased number of top japanese players attending. there is no sure thing b/c this is going to be the first big international ssf4 tourney w/ both americans and japanese attending. the japanese have traditionally had an advantage in that the games are released earlier there than in the US, but ssf4 was released simultaneously around the world. everyone has had the same amount of time to practice with the characters new to super, and the new ultra combos. the japanese are at a slight disadvantage in that they’ve had less experience playing against the console-only characters of vanilla sf4 than the US has. 1 week. 1 week to go before it all plays out. i can’t fucking wait.

now, onto the un-hype stuff. the fact that they’re partnering w/ stickam may not bode well for stream quality.