SK Telecom’s 5G gaming festival starts today

SK Telecom’s three-day festival dedicated to 5G networks’ impact on gaming kicks off today at Kintex in Goyang, Gyeonggi.

The 5GX Game Festival comes as Korea’s mobile carriers, including SK Telecom, plan to launch their 5G networks next year.

“We hope customers can feel the value of 5G networks through the 5GX Game Festival,” said Yoon Yong-cheol, head of the communications center at SK Telecom. “We will continue presenting the future created by 5G.”

At SK’s Oksusu social VR experience zone, visitors can wear virtual reality headsets offered on site and enter a virtual space to view e-sports together with their friends. Oksusu is SK Telecom’s video streaming app, and the carrier is set to add a social community feature to the app by the end of this year so that users from around the world can socialize in a virtual space.

Visitors can play games as well as watch them. Wearing a VR headset and walking on a 360-degree treadmill invented specifically for VR gaming, visitors can enjoy the Ready Player One VR game, staging a battle in a virtual space, getting attacked by zombies and doing a parachute jump to invade enemy territory. Visitors may also play popular games such as League of Legends, Battleground and FIFA on wireless 5G networks so they can feel the ultra-high speed and low latency of the new network.

The festival will connect an open e-sport competition site with an exhibition hall, both inside the festival venue, so that viewers can feel the atmosphere of the competition live. The exhibition hall will be equipped with VR devices and 5G tablet PCs.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun@joongang.co.kr]