Connecting Sky for Milestone Moments: SkyFest Cinema Tech

Only a handful of days until the biggest party Sky has ever seen! We said earlier that players will be able to experience much of the in-person SkyFest event even if they can’t travel to Tokyo. How will that be possible? With a little tech magic: SkyFest Cinema Tech!

When we began discussing SkyFest late last year, we were excited about the opportunity to build on what we’d learned from past in-person events and create the ultimate celebration of our community’s 5th anniversary.

We also knew that, unfortunately, the vast majority of our players wouldn’t be able to attend due to how spread out our community is. This is feedback we regularly receive whenever we post about Sky Assemblies or attending different shows—excitement, but also sadness and a desire to be part of the action.

After a lot of discussion as a team, we realized that we could build a solution—one that took advantage of technology we’d already developed and that lined up with our vision of bringing Sky kids around the world together to share magical moments.

New Sky Experiences in the SkyFest Cinema

We regularly poll players both in-game and across our various community platforms to understand which experiences in Sky stand out as the most powerful and emotional. One point players regularly share with us is how magical the AURORA concert experience was for them.

A major part of why that is comes down to experiences shared at scale—enjoying something special in a great gathering of fellow community members. Festival Tech has enabled us to explore that direction, and while we’ve found that the technology doesn’t suit every situation, it’s the way that players around the world can share concerts, festivals, fireworks, and more.

Festival Tech was our starting point. Next we needed to figure out how to share what was happening in Tokyo with players on other continents. That’s where the idea for what we’re referring to as SkyFest Cinema Tech came into play.

This feature allows us to take big moments like the opening ceremony keynote, developer talks, a variety of content made by us and even by players, and share it with the global community simultaneously.

This brings us to SkyFest!

Come July 13th JST, even if you’re unable to fly to Tokyo and join us there, you can join hundreds of thousands of other Sky kids in our cinema space and share in our celebration of the first five years of Sky. This technology will be complemented by a full suite of immersive activities in Aviary Village, plus guided in-game tours with some of our development team that will also be shared live on stage in Tokyo.

We sincerely hope that SkyFest Cinema Tech, combined with the other tools and features we’ve developed over the last five years, lets everyone feel the magic and connection of our first ever Sky convention!

As part of our mission to make SkyFest accessible for players outside of Japan, we put in extra effort to make sure that this exciting new technology would be available to as many players as possible.

Our engineering team was able to overcome most of the technical challenges this feature presented during development, but unfortunately there were some challenges that could not be solved in time for SkyFest. This means that players on Nintendo Switch as well as a small percentage of Android devices unfortunately will not be able to experience SkyFest Cinema Tech.

However, players on iOS, most Android devices, PlayStation, PC, and Steam Deck will be good to go when the festivities begin! Where possible, we encourage players to take advantage of Sky being a multi-platform title, and to join us on a different device if the one they usually play on doesn’t support this new feature.

Only the Beginning

This new feature celebrates a huge moment, but it’s not only for SkyFest. We’re excited to debut in-game streaming for the game’s 5th anniversary, but even after the event ends, we’ll keep iterating to expand and improve it for every platform that we can bring it to.

This is a milestone that we couldn’t have reached without the entire community. For five years, Sky has connected players across the world, and in-game streaming can create even more meaningful experiences with your fellow Children of the Light. We can’t wait to share it with you and see what it makes possible!