Charles Conroy is Vice President of Gaming for The Switch, but it's not for the Nintendo Switch.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00now we'd like to welcome Charles Conroy to the show he's the vice president of
00:09gaming for the switch and he's agreed to give us a little bit of his time today
00:12Charles welcome hey how you doing very good so we want to start off with some
00:16basics here the the questions that you're going to get asked all the time
00:20first off what's the best video game of all time Counter-Strike hands down
00:25perfect cool I didn't expect that answer you didn't what did you guys think I was
00:29gonna say oh no it's just up usually get the the you know your Metal Gear solids
00:34and your Call of Duties and the Counter-Strike I like that answer a lot I
00:39think they made a perfect game with CS it's the most balanced game and and you
00:42know I played it for many many years on a semi-professional level and then
00:45obviously with complexity was very involved in it so it's very near and dear
00:49to my heart well I might be able to guess the answer to the next question then but
00:52how did you get introduced into eSports so I got introduced by a game called
00:57Counter-Strike I had a feeling I mean but you talk about like Counter-Strike the
01:02pinnacle LAN party game of the 90s 2000s like yeah the game that everyone who
01:09attended a LAN party at least played once yep I absolutely I think my first LAN was
01:131999 I was like 14 years old and at the time the thought of going to someone's
01:22house and meeting up with a bunch of people that I met on the internet was a
01:24little scary to my parents yeah Stan before eSports was a thing but you know
01:29I'm still friends with those guys today and you know that game really kind of
01:32changed my life so if you could hang out with any eSports athlete anyone who
01:37would it be you know I'm a big fan of Jordan Gilbert nothing so you know it'd be
01:43fun to want to grab a burger with Jordan soon awesome awesome now here's the thing
01:48we got a lot of folks here and we brought you on to talk about something very
01:52specifically it's called the switch now guys it's not that it's not that switch
01:57not this is something very different explain to us how important the switch
02:03is to the eSports infrastructure what it is oh sorry I didn't mean to cut you off
02:08there what's cool about the switch to me is it's you know so what we do just to
02:14explain it very quickly is we get a signal from point A to point B so if you
02:18know you're in an arena getting that signal out of the arena onto your TV or
02:22onto you know your computer your screen is what we do we do that transmission we
02:26do events like the Academy Awards we did the Super Bowl this year and many years
02:30before that you know we've won a couple Emmys for it and what's exciting to me is
02:34a is an eSports guy coming in from the eSports world whenever we get traditional
02:38sports companies coming in and delivering Super Bowl level quality
02:41production it just raises the bar for eSports so it's you know it's gonna bring
02:45everything up a notch and I you know I'm kind of sick of eSports being you know
02:50treated like a send-off and it should get the same level of attention and I
02:55think that's what these guys are doing and they're doing it really well I'm
02:58better than anyone in the world they did the Overwatch League finals yeah and I
03:01think that was a pretty flawless stream so whenever we get the same
03:04attention real sports does I think it's a win for everyone yeah I mean you
03:09mentioned eSports a lot of the times at least until maybe very recently has been
03:13always treated as a bit of an afterthought it's it's it's oh that's what
03:16the kids are into yeah can you talk about kind of this expansion that we're
03:21seeing of eSports into the mainstream and how the switch plays into that I mean
03:25look the numbers are pretty undeniable right if you look at eSports
03:28viewership numbers they're far exceeding traditional sports so I mean I'm kind of
03:32a hardcore eSports guy but when when people are like oh people get played to be
03:35you know play video games like you know I look at them I go people get played to
03:39baseball that's actually a little more shocking because those people are
03:41watching it so oh it's only it only hurts because it's it's true yeah I mean
03:46the numbers are there the viewership's there and and I think people need to
03:51adapt so on the production end of things what what can the switch bring to an
03:57eSports presentation that other video services can't so I mean I think the
04:02biggest thing is you know we're zero latency so you're not gonna see lag or
04:06choppiness in the production we can broadcast to any format so we can get it
04:11on twitch YouTube traditional TV all at the same time which is actually really
04:16hard to do so we can allow eSports to get to more places seamlessly and again I
04:22think that's a that's a win for the entire industry awesome so eSports as
04:28opposed to traditional sports presents a lot of unique challenges from a
04:32production angle whether it be trying to make the the camera on the players
04:37interesting or whatnot looking at it from the perspective of the switch what
04:42is the most difficult challenge a program or a product like that has to
04:45overcome I mean there's a lot of different feeds you're pulling from any
04:49sports right so let's just take counter-strike for example I think it's
04:52kind of obvious I'm a fan of that game you know that's 10 that's 10 player
04:56feeds plus player cameras that's like 16 different cameras that you're you're
04:59jumping between we just released a really cool new product here at NAB where
05:05we can grab someone's feed so let's say the individual player and broadcast it on
05:10all their social media at the same time simultaneously so every player across
05:14their Instagram their Facebook we can broadcast on their Twitter you can get all
05:18their individual feeds which I think will change the game for tournament
05:21organizers because if I'm let's take nothing for example if I'm you know a
05:25nothing fan but I may not be a fan of his overall team I can just watch him the
05:29entire event I think we're seeing a lot of that too and in esports players
05:33showing loyal or viewers showing loyalty to you know maybe a player as opposed to
05:38a team I think myself as a huge double lift fan and once he left counter-logic
05:41gaming well I kind of left counter-logic gaming too no you fair weather fans
05:46yeah fair weather fans no brand loyalty in you it didn't help that they got way
05:50worse once he left I mean but if you know if you're a fan of a athlete or a
05:54player you're a fan of that player and you're gonna follow him from team to team so it
05:57it would be nice to just be able to watch the person you and I just want to ask
06:01this somebody who's been sort of on the you know team side with complexity gaming
06:07as well as somebody who is now in the infrastructure side you know what is the
06:11future of esports how does this investment help what levels now does it
06:17need to go to in order to continue that mainstream penetration I mean that's a
06:21great question right I think the future of esports is exciting I think it's
06:26growing at a rapid pace far far faster than any other traditional sport ever
06:30did I mean if you look at football the guys were wearing leather helmets and
06:33cheap and cigarettes on the sidelines for 30 years before that even had an
06:36evolution right so I think what the switch does is it brings a professional
06:41sports level of production to esports and I think we desperately need that and I
06:46think the future of esports I mean it's it's a tough question because that you know I
06:51don't want to get it wrong but you know with the franchising models being one way and
06:54then you know valve not going the franchising models the future of esports
06:57honestly guys is anyone's guess but I I'm excited to see where it goes and it is an
07:01industry that's been really good at rolling with the punches and adapting and
07:04evolving rapidly right well I think that's kind of the unique thing about the
07:08esports industry is it's all based in grassroots I mean the whole thing has been
07:13based out of necessity whether it's hey we need to find a way to connect a bunch of
07:16computers in our basement to hey we need to find a way to broadcast a tournament
07:20even if it's just some guy with one camera the entirety of the esports space
07:24has kind of always been based out of that grassroots organization and we're
07:27seeing a shift now I don't want to call it the corporatization of it but we're
07:30seeing the the advancement into like this professional age of esports
07:35production do you think that there's something lost in that or is it like is it
07:39overall the way it needs to be a good thing so as a former team owner I'm a fan of
07:44it you know there's obviously more oversight but esports really was a wild wild west for
07:49a long time it was and you know you got burned a lot because there wasn't a lot
07:54of regulation there so I you know I don't want them to over regulate it but at the
07:57same time that if for us to become a true professional sport which I honestly I
08:01think we're there I don't think it's something that's gonna happen in the
08:04future I think we're there currently yeah you know you're gonna need some sort
08:07of guidelines for for people to operate by in order to make it an attractive
08:11investment yeah streaming and gaming have become this you know very attractive way to
08:17try to make a living for a lot of people or at least you know creatively put
08:21yourself out there one of the things that we're seeing is when players are
08:25deciding whether they want to go pro they're saying hey do I want to go pro
08:28and try to be the best in the world or do I want to try to be a streamer and
08:32potentially make more money doing that and it's a tough decision what can the
08:36switch offer to someone that you mentioned this idea of being able to
08:38stream a single player over their social media kind of like helping to build
08:41their brand that that seems like it'd be a really attractive from a an
08:45athletes standpoint yeah I mean I think we offer players a lot of ways to build
08:50their individual brands and as I said you know we're connected in every venue
08:53around the world so we can just deliver very low latency lag free gaming which I
08:59think is again a win for everyone so we've got more and more games looking to
09:04move it make it as eSports you've got Google looking to make waves with their
09:08Stadia platform we still live in an era where bandwidth is an issue where data caps
09:14are a thing fiber optic cables not available anywhere does something like
09:18the switch do you have to take that sort of thing into consideration yeah so we
09:21have the world's largest fiber network right now but there are places that you
09:26know we have to bring an internet and so that's another thing that we do is if
09:30there's not the fiber to support the quality of of streaming that you know our
09:34fans have come to expect we literally build it and it's not an easy thing to do and I
09:40hats off to our engineers because they're really impressive guys and
09:42and frankly they're way smarter than I am but they they create networks where
09:46they don't exist and I think that's it's an incredibly impressive and cool
09:49thing yeah you you mentioned the Overwatch Grand Finals a few moments ago and
09:54that's you know sort of one of the gold standards of production in eSports right
09:58now they are on NBC a few weeks ago ABC a few weeks ago Network TV how far off do
10:06you think we are before we see major legacy broadcast companies just taking the
10:13plunge and saying you know what we've got a partnership now every week we're
10:17showing eSports I mean I think the question there is do people want to watch
10:21eSports on linear TV and and that's I don't have the answer that that's a good
10:26question but I think people they watch it on their computer so I don't think the
10:31fact that eSports isn't on traditional television is necessarily a bad thing
10:35because I don't really think that's where the audience lives now if it's if
10:39it's dual casted like on Twitch and on traditional TV that's fantastic and I'm
10:43completely supportive of that because I want more people to have access to eSports
10:46you know the more people the better really but I I don't know if if people are
10:52going to pivot their model obviously eLeague is doing a great job of it those
10:56guys over there so I'd love to see eSports on on more traditional television
11:00but I don't know if it's something people are clamoring to do right now
11:04Charles Conroy he's the vice president of gaming for the switch thank you so much
11:08for your time today man thank you guys appreciate it