Is Counter-Strike Seeing It's Last Year?

With ESWC coming up we are continuing our pre-ESWC interview series, this time with 69N-28E's very own naSu!

For the next interview in our series we have chosen no other than the recent WSVG Louisville winner naSu from the finnish powerhouse 69N28E! In our interview he shares his thoughts on the next year for Counter-Strike 1.6, and it is not looking bright. Catch the full interview below!

Hello, naSu! Could you introduce yourself and your team to our readers?
- ahoy there! my name is Niko kovanen known as nasu 17 years old from finland playing for 69N-28E. our team consists of me lurppis natu conte and ruuit we've been playing together for what.. few months now i guess? =)

Congratulations on your victory at the WSVG in Louisville - How did you practice before this event?
- Thank you! We had 1 week long bootcamp in sweden, Inferno-Online for the event and ofc ESWC, other than that we didn't really play :D

What happened at WSVG Louisville which lead to numerous delays etc?
- All i know is that they took admins from BYOC or something, and had 20 of them in the beginning and after few games they were down to 3 so we couldnt continue without them finding new admins.. :O

The Counter-Strike 1.6 has suffered great losses this year, with the CPL removing it completely, WSVG has chosen to only have it in 3 of their 6 stops
and the CGS are tempting players to start with CS:Source. Will you end up playing Source aswell or do you think 1.6 will rise again?
- I think there is enough 1.6 tournaments for this year, but i think this will be the last year and no im not really into source and dont think im going to play it


Are you not tempted by the fame and prizemoney that the CGS offer?
- CGS Europe wont be near the same moneys as it is in USA, if it was i would prolly try to qualify but thats all


Could you describe what you do 15 minutes before a big match? How do you motivate yourself and your team?
- :D all the same we did in WSVG Louisville, smoke cigs, buy something to drink and talk shit at the computers and wait for the game to begin :D nothing special here


There was no ESWC-qualifier in Finland, instead 69N-28E got chosen by the ESWC. Do you think there were any other team in Finland that could have a chance against your team, aswell as a chance to place good at the ESWC?
- Only team that could have done it would be Logitech.fi and they are lacking something on lan :D 5-0 for us on lan and 0-3 on inet... well anyways i dont think it would have been different


The worlds greatest gamers are attending the ESWC in Paris in about a week. How will your team prepare before this event?
- We cant pracc online, and if we pracc it always ends up leaving the server cause noone cares. so we had the 1week bootcamp in IOS and thats it :P 


HLTV.orgs predictions for the ESWC placed your team at a 4th place. What do you think about the predictions? Will you place above this?
- I dont know, i heard theres only prizemoney for top3, so 4th place is the same as 16th for me. top3 is all that matters

What do you think about the teams attending this event? Could you make your own ESWC top3 list?
- Hard to do a top3 list, but top4 would be us fnatic mibr pentagram not in any order tho

What are your expectations for the tournament compared to the WSVG? Are you expecting better standards in Paris ?
- I have high expectations cause i've never heard anything bad about ESWC, only that theres TFT's and i hate them =)

On behalf of HLTV.org, we would like to wish you the best of luck in Paris! Any last shoutouts before we wrap this up?
- THANK YOUUU ;> id like to thank all our fans and woohoo lets cs 

You can visit 69N-28E here!
Stay tuned for more pre ESWC-interviews exclusively on HLTV.org!