Pixelworks Partners with GALA Sports to Optimize the Visual Display of "Total Football" on Smartphones

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Excellent Picture Quality with High Clarity, High Frame Rate Gaming with Low Power Consumption, Realistic Portrayal of Fierce Competition, Great Immersion for Sports Mobile Gaming

SHANGHAI, April 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Pixelworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: PXLW), a leading provider of innovative video and display processing solutions, today announced that GALA Sports' first self-developed football simulation game, Total Football, has integrated Pixelworks' Rendering Accelerator SDK as part of its solution to improve the visual experience of mobile gaming. Coupled with Pixelworks X7 (or above) visual processors, the Rendering Accelerator serves as the bridge to deliver high frame rate game content precisely and efficiently on mobile devices, achieving smooth and immersive game experiences with low power consumption.

As a football simulation game, Total Football is licensed by FIFPro and includes Ronaldinho as its Global Ambassador. Based on a neural network AI algorithm and motion matching engine, the game provides smooth control and operational experience as well as high definition (with frame rate up to 120 fps) picture quality, supports real-time PVP, ultra-low latency and fair competition. In the first month following its release in July 2022 in mainland China on the iOS App Store, the game topped the download rankings in Sports Games and ranked 6^th among Free Games downloaded. Total Football has now been launched in many overseas regions, and it has won unanimous praise from players at home and abroad for its fair gameplay and smoothness in control and operation.

Compared with RPG and SLG games, which account for a larger share of the market, sports games have a higher threshold of technology accumulation, consumer cognition and product experience for market entry. To gain wide market recognition, game development teams need to have the determination to devote themselves to sports-based games, which requires a longer-term mindset and approach to product development and operation. Additionally, an accumulation of advanced and profound technology is necessary to overcome the hurdles of sports game production, including motion capture, rendering and visual optimization. It is important to note that the key factors of visual experience for mobile gaming not only lie in the content production phase, but also in the display phase.

Given that the visual display performance of smartphones is confined by hardware limitations, users often need to make trade-offs between frame rate and power consumption when running high frame rate mobile games. In order to overcome these limitations, Pixelworks and GALA Sports are working together to implement the visual processing solution and enhance display quality throughout the production-to-display lifecycle of mobile games. Leveraging the combination of Pixelworks' Rendering Accelerator and X7 visual processor, android smartphones are able to offload the GPU rendering pressure and fully realize the 120fps frame rate of Total Football with low power consumption.

"Sports simulation games are one of the most difficult game categories to develop. Gameplay design, players' action animation, graphics rendering, all of these elements need to be realistic enough to give users a strong sense of immersion," said Huang Xiang, Chief Technology Officer of GALA Sports. "As for the game development per se, GALA Sports team has made technology breakthroughs in rendering, AI, animation/physics, Frame synchronization PvP, cross-platform support. In terms of visual display on mobile devices, we hope to break free from the constraints of power consumption by leveraging Pixelworks' rich experience in mobile visual display optimization so that more Total Football users can enjoy a longer time of 120 fps gaming experience on their smartphones."

"As part of enabling a comparable AAA visual experience to PCs on mobile devices, Pixelworks is committed to partnering with game content providers, game engine developers, smartphone manufacturers and other collaborative players. Our end goal is to cultivate a mobile game ecosystem in which more in-depth technical exchanges and underlying resource sharing results in a comprehensive visual optimization of mobile games – from production to display," said Ting Xiong, President of Pixelworks China. "We are pleased that Pixelworks' visual display solutions help to deliver the coexistence of high frame rate and low power consumption, providing Total Football users with a more enjoyable gaming experience. With the continuous maturity of technologies and the end user experience, sports games are poised to thrive. We hope that through our continuous efforts, the unique charm of sports games will be extended to a larger group of smartphone users." 

About GALA Sports

Founded in 2013, GALA Sports (HKSE:02458) is now the largest mobile sports simulation games developer and operator in China. With its profound experience in the sports game market and stable high-quality product development over the years, GALA Sports has obtained remarkable market success with titles like Football Master, NBA Basketball Master, Football Master 2, Total Football and MLB Clutch Hit Baseball. During all this time, GALA Sports has been partnering with renowned sports leagues and clubs in the industry, such as FIFPro, NBA, MLB, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, making itself stand out among all game companies in China within its largest number of sports IP copyrights as well as over 30 million game users worldwide.

About Pixelworks

Pixelworks provides industry-leading content creation, video delivery and display processing solutions and technology that enable highly authentic viewing experiences with superior visual quality, across all screens – from cinema to smartphone and beyond. The Company has more than 20 years of history delivering image processing innovation to leading providers of consumer electronics, professional displays and video streaming services. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.pixelworks.com.

Note: Pixelworks and the Pixelworks logo are trademarks of Pixelworks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Pixelworks, Inc.