TechGraphs News Roundup: 7/24/2015

It’s been a busy week for sports-tech news, so let’s jump right into it. Here are the stories we found interesting this week.

If you don’t plan on subscribing to NBA League Pass next year, but worry that you really might want to see a random out-of-market game, the NBA has you covered now. You will be able to purchase single games, a la carte, from League Pass starting next season. This is good news! The not-so-good news is that single games will run you $7 a pop. Still, it’s nice to know the feature is available, and it might come in handy for the diehard fans who take a random trip but still want to catch their team’s games.

In a similar, but more stripped-down note, the NFL announced a new video service called Game Pass. Don’t get too excited — you won’t be able to stream regular-season games live with it. You do get to live-stream preseason games, and have access to full replays of past games, for what it’s worth. But that’s kind of it. Replays will be available right after the game ends, and fans can tap any prior game for any team all the way back to 2009. It’s like NFL Rewind, basically, but it will be available on pretty much all your devices.

The EA Sports Hockey League was one of the big missing features from NHL 15, but NHL is bringing it back for 16, and fans can sign up for the public beta to help test it out. Check the last link for all the details, but the skinny is that EASHL is getting a pretty big revamp. In a possible face-saving push, EA is issuing the beta as part of a campaign to involve more user feedback. It’ll be available July 30th if you have NHL 15 for either Xbox One or PS4.

You know how EA’s NCAA Football didn’t use player names, but pretty much copied everything else they could from the player to use in their game without paying the athletes? Well, they got sued for it, and EA shut down production of the game in 2013. Fast-forward to now, and the players won their $60 million settlement. If they file for compensation, they’ll receive some cash. Good job, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken.

Speaking of, NCAA teams might be making a comeback to 2K basketball games soon, though the scope isn’t quite known yet.

Something I didn’t know: Nike has been making the classic Converse Chuck Taylor shoe since 2003. Nike acquired Converse after the former went bankrupt. Hmm, the more you know. Anyway, the Chuck is getting a revamp, but only on the inside. Nike is using some of their shoe tech to make the Chucks more comfortable. Same classic look, more comfortable shoe. Cream on the inside, clean on the outside, if you will.

We talk about GoPros a bit on this site. We also talk about live-streaming apps like Meerkat a lot. So when it’s announced that people can now stream on Meerkat using their GoPros, it seems relevant to our interests.

We recently mentioned how drugs like Adderall were being used as PEDs in eSports. Well, some major eSports leagues are instituting drug testing now. I’m not quite sure how it will work for players with real-world needs for the drugs, but it’s a step in the right direction for those who care about that kind of thing.

Speaking of gaming, popular game-streaming site Twitch is ditching Flash for HTML5. This is good news for anyone who likes stable performance, secure computing, or living in the year 2013.

If you buy Madden NFL 16 for the Xbox One, you’ll get a year of EA Access, which is sort of like Netflix for EA games.

Because it seems there’s always Daily Fantasy Sports news, FanDuel has purchased the company that made their apps, and DraftKings will pay $250 million over the next two years to advertise on ESPN.

That’s all for this week. Enjoy your summer weekend, and be excellent to each other.





David G. Temple is the Managing Editor of TechGraphs and a contributor to FanGraphs, NotGraphs and The Hardball Times. He hosts the award-eligible podcast Stealing Home. Dayn Perry once called him a "Bible Made of Lasers." Follow him on Twitter @davidgtemple.

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