StatusPro announced that its NFL Pro Era will debut this fall on VR headsets as the first officially licensed NFL VR title.

Miami-based StatusPro is a sports technology and gaming company that uses real-time player data to create authentic extended reality experiences. Featured today at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, the game will debut this fall on the Meta Quest and PlayStation VR platforms.

The goal is to help fans experience what it’s like to compete as the quarterback of their favorite NFL team, through an immersive 3D first-person experience, Troy Jones, co-founder and CEO of StatusPro, said in a statement. an interview with GamesBeat. (Jones will be at a VR gaming panel at our GamesBeat Summit 2022 event next week.)

“You are immersed in this world. You’re seeing the defense coming at you,” Jones said. “They come to tackle you and you have to make those decisions that a quarterback has to make. And I think that’s the most exciting part. You’re going to watch for the first time and you’re in control of making those decisions and making those plays, and it democratizes what it’s really like to play. Only VR/XR can provide that.”

StatusPro released its official NFL Pro Era trailer featuring an up-close view from the perspective of NFL quarterback Lamar Jackson, incorporating pre-alpha gameplay and a voiceover from acclaimed hip hop artist and former NFL draft prospect. the NFL, Tobe Nwigwe.

The game will take players from the pregame locker room through the tunnel to the explosive sounds and sights inside the stadium, even the chatter inside the huddle, Jones said.

As a quarterback, you can play standing up or sitting down, said Andrew Hawkins, co-founder and president, in an interview with GamesBeat. You can do launch gestures with the controllers in your hands. You can do running motions with your arms, but the game doesn’t capture your leg motions. Otherwise, you would probably hit a wall.

“It’s really about extracting the fun,” said Hawkins. “It is democratization. We understand that not everyone can pitch like Tom Brady. But you don’t have to have perfect fluid motion to complete a pass. It’s not about that”.

Hawkins added: “For your quarterback to run, you can also use the switch. It was also important for us to create those physical movements. So, you know, we always see our game as a fusion of digital and physical space. And our experience brings that to the fore.”

The StatusPro developer team wants to change the future of sports gaming and bring a genuine level of engagement between athletes and fans. Using a combination of real-time NFL game data and StatusPro’s athlete-driven technology, NFL Pro Era aims to be an authentic and immersive first-person VR football game.

Derrick Levy, director of AI and gameplay at StatusPro, said in an interview with GamesBeat that he uses AI and machine learning to improve the game’s realism. He once worked on the Madden NFL football video games and now times have changed in terms of degrees of realism. He said that StatusPro looked at 10,000 plays a team called in the past and how they would likely perform in a particular scenario.

“The idea is that when you play against a team, you will see the same trends as a real team,” he said. “We have access to that data and we are using it. This is a unique opportunity to give consumer fans this unique perspective of the athlete that they know no other game will give them.”

Levy believes that there are many fans like him.

“I am a huge football fan. And one thing that’s always intrigued me is, especially from a quarterback perspective, that you see Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers make these incredible pitches. He is signaled 60 yards down the field. When you dissect how difficult it is to do that, it’s amazing.”

He added: “These guys can complete a pass when they have just two and a half seconds before a 300-pound guy takes them down and they have to throw it 60 yards down the field with precision. It is incredibly difficult to do. From an amateur to knowing how to put himself in that perspective and try to do that. Certainly, in the game, we help you a lot, otherwise you would probably never complete it. But if we didn’t help him, it would be impossible for the average person to do it. So we want to give that perspective. You have the opportunity to be that superhero.”

origins

StatusPro has been in the works for about five years, starting first with a suite of training products for NFL football players and other athletes. Its Pre Game Prep tool used data combined with augmented, mixed and virtual reality technologies to train athletes. The founders put together a team that is about half former athletes.

Both Jones and Hawking are former athletes and saw opportunities to try to help impact the game and help players and coaches improve.

“We saw that by using virtual reality, coaches can do that,” Jones said. “So we created a training product that allows players to take player tracking data and recreate plays in a 3D simulation that can then be experienced via mixed reality or a big screen. They saw the use case to help them improve and they also had fun with that headset.”

Added Jones, “That’s when Hawk and I looked at each other and said, ‘Here’s an opportunity to not only leverage the simulation product that we build to help athletes get better, but to extract that simulation into a game and put fans in the shoes of their favorite players to give them an experience they’ve never had, playing as an NFL player.”

Since they already knew the NFL, they were able to obtain a license with the league and the NFL Players Association to obtain the rights to use the images of players, teams and more.

The company’s investors include Naomi Osaka, LeBron James, Maverick Carter, Paul Wachter, Drake, Jimmy Iovine, along with investment groups Greycroft, TitleTown Tech, Verizon Ventures, Haslam Sports Group, 49ers Enterprises and SC Holdings.

The company raised a seed round in 2021. With consultants and employees, the company has about 40 people working on the product. The team plans to grow the team.

The team is working remotely, although some are focused on Florida. Jones noted that the NFL is experimenting more with new types of game categories. The title has been in the works for about 2.5 years.

“It’s really about getting people excited, about starting to build momentum,” Jones said. “This is a new opportunity and a new space. We’re excited to get people’s eyes on him. We understand that we are not trying to replicate the console gaming experience. We are looking to take advantage of new technology and do something different.”

And if you’re gaming this fall, be sure to put the controller strap on your wrist. You don’t want to throw the controller at your TV.