ESL

Intel and ESL have taken to the stage of E3 to announce their plans for partnership on bringing esports to a bigger crowd.

ESL has long been one of the biggest players in the esports event industry, so it's clear that Intel is serious about making esports big with their new esports partnership.

Some may not be aware, but Intel has also been in the esports game for a long time. The ESL and Intel partnership has also been ongoing for a good few years. The IEM (Intel Extreme Masters) esports event, for example, started back in 2007.

IEM has always been an event co-hosted by Intel and ESL, so with this new partnership, you may be wondering what will actually come out of it that hasn't already been done in the past.

Intel will essentially be the driving force of all Intel events going forth - Intel will be responsible for the operation of all PCs needed for eSports events, and Intel will also be in control of all live streaming events.

Intel has also confirmed

A new eSports streaming platform like Twitch has been announced by two Counter Strike veterans that could potentially change the way we all watch eSports matches online. Traditionally, eSports fans will need to visit Twitch to watch a game live, but with the new platform, named Znipe, fans may have the option to watch an eSports match the way they'd like to.

With Znipe, viewers are given the option to view multiple stream sources at once. However, these multiple sources will usually come from one match.

Take this as an example - viewers on Znipe will be able to set up their own personal overlay, which could include a few POV streams of their favorite players, a stream that shows the view the commentators are seeing and additional widgets for the map or the radar. With this amount of control, players will be able to have their own interactive viewing experience. To really work, Znipe will need the support of tournament hosts to set up multiple streams and POVs for the viewers

Previously it was announced that a Mortal Kombat XL tournament will take place at EVO 2016, but before today the prize pool sat at $60,000. Today, Netherrealm and Warner Bros. have teamed up to offer an additional $50,000 for the prize pool.

Going forward, the EVO 2016 Mortal Kombat XL tournament will now have a $110,000 total prize pool. Neither Netherrealm, EVO or Warner Bros. have announced exactly how the tournament winnings will be split, but the first place winner is definitely going to go home with a considerable chunk of money.

It wasn't long ago that the ESL Pro League Finals paid out big time to SonicFox for taking the winning spot. We can't wait to see how big Mortal Kombat will grow with thanks to the added financial support of the developer and the publisher.

The fighting game community has been lagging behind MOBAs and FPS title when it comes to eSports winnings, but with hundreds of thousands going to Mortal Kombat X alone in 2016 so far, it's clear to

Details on two new operators dropped during the recent ESL Pro League for Rainbow Six. The two new operators will be part of a new faction. Which, unsurprisingly will be representative of the Navy SEALS. Even though the addition of the SEALS faction was expected, we're pretty excited to see them make it into the game, because let's be honest the Navy SEALS have always been pretty awesome, especially in Rainbow Six.

We'll be getting a defender and an attacker for the new Navy SEAL team, and in similar fashion to the previous Black Ice DLC release, one of which will be a male character whilst the other will be a female character. The first character for the upcoming DLC is named Valkyrie - she will be the defender and will have a range of extra surveillance systems at her disposal. On the other side of the field Blackbeard has been introduced as an attacker who will have access to a rifle with a deployable shield weapon attachment.

Unfortunately we haven't received much more

There was a lot happening last week in the eSports world. Counter Strike: Global Offensive had a tournament that saw Luminosity Gaming and Fnatic battle it out in the grand finals in an incredibly close fashion, League of Legends saw SK Telecom T1 take Fnatic out in the finals and other games were played out by some of the best teams in the world too.

One game didn't get quite as much attention as we think it should have done, though. Rainbow Six Siege made a splash into competitive gaming this year at Katowice and it saw eight of the current best EU teams play it out on PC. Eight of the best North American teams will soon battle it out against each other two, and the top teams from each region will then take to a final tournament with a prize pool of $100,000.

In the EU playoffs, each team played four games. In first place, PENTA eSports won with 3 wins and 1 loss. PENTA had a total of 20 round wins within their four games, whilst second place TCM-Gaming had 19 round wins