Sony launches FavoriteSpace VR world with Android and iOS apps to connect sports fans to their favorite teams
Sony has launched the FavoriteSpace virtual reality world with Android and iOS smartphone apps to connect sports fans to their favorite teams. Users can enjoy VR replays, content, social games, and tours while interacting with a community of fans. Advanced player tracking technologies enable free-viewpoint camera replays from any location.
The FavoriteSpace VR world is an extension of team efforts to increase fan engagement by helping them get to know their favorite sports teams, bond with fellow fans, and enjoy games better. The cost of hiring tour guides and creating museums to teach fans about team history and highlights is significantly reduced with VR tours in FavoriteSpace that are open 24/7 and accessible worldwide.
Users can customize their avatars with virtual merchandise and uniforms. Fans communicate using non-verbal stamps, body motion, and other effects that bypass language barriers while playing interactive games and quizzes. The social aspects of this customization and interaction help bond fans to their fellow fans and sports teams.
FavoriteSpace utilizes Hawk-Eye Innovations camera technologies to capture player motions during games. The system then recreates the game using virtual player avatars on a virtual sports field for game replays. Users can access these free-viewpoint highlights anytime. Virtual cameras can be positioned anywhere by the teams, enabling camera angles that are impossible in reality for an even more unique fan experience.
The Sony FavoriteSpace apps for Android and iOS are available free to fans in Japan, the UK, and the USA on supported devices. Readers with smartphones that support Miracast can view the FavoriteSpace screen mirrored into a virtual 360" display using AR glasses like the Rokid Max here on Amazon.
Manchester City, a soccer team based in England, is the first sports team to launch in FavoriteSpace with the ‘Man City Virtual Etihad Stadium’.
Source(s)
August 16, 2024
Sony Launches FavoriteSpace™, a New Service to Energize Sports Fan Communities
"Manchester City Area" Released as First Content on App
Tokyo, Japan — Sony Group Corporation (Sony) today launched FavoriteSpace™, a new service designed to energize sports fan communities by offering new ways to enjoy sports. Making the most of Sony's technology and entertainment expertise, FavoriteSpace will deliver new sports content and create a social entertainment space where fans can share their passion for their favorites.
FAVORITESPACE
As part of the new service, Sony today launched the FavoriteSpace smartphone app.*1 This first offering in the app is a dedicated virtual space (an "area") where users can enjoy content from Manchester City Football Club in a variety of ways.
With FavoriteSpace, Sony will provide a venue for fans who share the same "favorites" to interact, as well as to connect with teams and players. By enriching the activities of sports fans both in physical and virtual space, Sony aims to create new experience value that will increase engagement among existing fans and also help to win new fans.
The FavoriteSpace app
With the app, users can visit virtual "areas" featuring the history and philosophy of their favorite sports teams with their avatars and enjoy team-specific content and interaction with other fans. Fans can experience the same zeal and excitement they would in the physical world in a uniquely virtual way by viewing immersive 3DCG content that leverage technologies such as the tracking system of Hawk-Eye Innovations, a Sony group company. In the development of the Manchester City Area, the first team area to launch, Sony has worked with Manchester City as the club's official Virtual Fan Engagement Partner since 2021 to conduct a proof of concept (PoC) and incorporate feedback from fans. Going forward, Sony will expand the experience by providing more areas and content for various teams and other sports.
*1 The FavoriteSpace app is available now in a trial version limited to free functions, as a preview to the official version, which will include paid functions and will launch in October. The app is now available in three countries: Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Key Experiences in FavoriteSpace App's Manchester City Area ("Man City Virtual Etihad Stadium")
1. A New Way to Enjoy Sports, Beyond Space and Time
Manchester City's home, the Etihad Stadium, has been faithfully reproduced in virtual space, and fans can visit anytime with their avatars. At the virtual stadium, fans can enjoy the kind of immersive virtual content that is only possible in virtual space, such as Immersive Highlights, which allow them to freely view highlights of past home games in 3DCG from any viewpoint.
2. Bonding Fans, Players, and the Team
Fans gathered as avatars in the virtual space can share their thoughts and passion for their team beyond nationality and language by communicating through emoticons, stamps, and interactions such as putting arms around each other’s shoulders. In addition, fans can express their support for the team in various ways, such as participating in events held in virtual space on actual match days, customizing their avatars with uniforms and goods, and creating fan banners. By responding to fans showing support in these ways, the team and the players can also interact with the fan community, thereby building even more unity among the fans and their team.
MANCITY
FavoriteSpace Links
FavoriteSpace website
App download page (iOS/Android)
App Store
Google Play
Click here for the press release from Manchester City Football Club.
About Sony Group Corporation
Sony Group Corporation is a creative entertainment company with a solid foundation of technology. Across its six business segments - Game & Network Services; Music; Pictures; Entertainment, Technology & Services; Imaging & Sensing Solutions; and Financial Services - Sony's purpose is to fill the world with emotion through the power of creativity and technology.
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* "FavoriteSpace" is a registered trademark or a trademark of Sony Group Corporation or its affiliates.
