The Rise of eSports Has Made Gaming Accessible and Attractive
INTE RVIEW
In an exclusive interview, Paul Collins, the General Manager for MEA at Acer, speaks about the gaming market in the region and future predictions What sort of market size do we have in the MEA region for gaming laptops and gaming PCs? Looking at the Middle East region, specifically UAE, GCC, Saudi, Egypt and a few export markets, the pure gaming laptop market is 15,000 units a month sold to gamers. It is a little tougher to predict Africa and the gaming desktop market, due to the self-build nature of the environment.
the regional gaming market? Mobile has been the largest contributor to the gaming market in the past, and it’s great to see a move from mobile to other platforms in recent years. It appears that COVID-19 may also be a factor, as people are seeking more entertainment from home. We also see that team orientated games, such as 1st person shooters are gaining popularity with young adults and the team format is bringing more players into the fold, not to mention the rise of eSports which has made gaming far more accessible and attractive locally.
seeing a massive demand for gaming monitors and accessories such as headsets. Following this there will be demand in the future for 3D, VR, and new tech which will drive the business.
How is innovation driving the growth of the gaming market? Can you share specific innovations from Acer? In the early years of gaming it was the race for more power and speed How according to you is the marwith size and weight being sacrificed. ket segmented between casual Now as power can be delivered in gamers, hardcore gamers, and more compact units, the drive to professional gamers? “thin and light” devices is becoming If we look at the PC user market, not What are the challenges to market more important. This means that taking mobile users into account, the growth? innovations such as AeroBlade and split would be 70% casual gamers, Speaking as a gaming PC manufacVortexflow – Acer’s patented cooling 25% hardcore and 5% Semi Pro turer, the next generation consoles systems, are becoming technologies and Pro. The console and mobile by Sony and Microsoft, in 2021 will that set us apart from competitors. market would be predominantly be strong competition. This is still Low power chips from CPU and GPU casual gaming. good for the overall market as there manufacturer mean reasonably good seems to be a natural evolution of battery life as well. What is a sweet price-point for players from console to PC over time. gamers in the region when it In general, some localised market Some of our other innovations comes to buying a gaming laptop uncertainty in our region can also include the technologies featured or a PC? provide short term challenges to in our monitors. There’s LightSense The fastest moving segment at the business. in which the monitor detects the moment is for a laptop with a 15amount of ambient light in the inch screen, an Intel Core i7 chipset What sort of market opportuniviewing environment and automatand GTX 1650 graphics card. The ties and threats do you face as a ically adjusts its brightness setprice-point for these products and gaming laptop and PC vendor in tings to maximize viewing comfort. configurations is between $900 and the regional gaming market? AdaptiveLight automatically adjusts $1000. The opportunities are endless, as the monitor’s backlights to suit the we notice that the market has not ambient light in the room, while What will the regional gamfollowed a natural path. This means ProxiSense reminds gamers to take ing market size and growth rate be that there is an endless stream of a break after a set amount of time. like in 2021? new entrants to the market with For gamers, remaining competitive We have seen very good growth over people shifting from mobile phone in terms of faster refresh rates and the past months and this will mean gaming to other forms of gaming, shorter response times is critical a record year in 2020. I expect that females growing interest in gaming, and so in line with that, we recently the market may grow a further 10 to E-Sports, and the entrance of formal launched new Predator Gaming 15% next year. gaming leagues in the ME. These monitors which include up to 360 opportunities stimulate growth for Hz refresh rate and a 0.5 ms (G to What are the key factors driving many years to come. We are also G) response time. 31
