Carry on gaming: The future of hardware for gaming in India

The new Asus G752 is a good example of a professional gaming platform and shows where all the money goes, to set it apart from standard laptops of this size.

In essence, it is a 17.3-inch full HD (1920 by 1080 pixels) back-lit LED laptop running on Windows 10 (64-bit). The storage however, is terabyte class: 1.4TB of hard disk plus 128GB of solid state drive. The hefty 16GB RAM is expandable to 64GB. This is — at 4.4kg— a heavyweight performer and I can’t see any self respecting gamer, daring to play with it, balanced on one’s lap. For one thing he or she, will get a solid blast of hot air from the menacing, toothy, orange-coloured heat vents at the back.

The keys are backlit and come with an anti-ghosting feature, which means even if you accidentally hit multiple keys, only the first will register, an important consideration when every millisecond matters, in competitive gaming.

The 6th generation Intel Core i7 main processor clocking 2.6GHz is complemented by Nvidia’s GTX 980m graphical processor unit, which ensures zero screen lag and jitter by syncing PC display with the graphics card .

There are a few other things which set this gaming platform apart from the standard laptop: a set of five programmable keys in the top left hand of the keyboard for gamers who want to create their own custom shortcuts. Another is the ASUS game centre which monitors CPU and GPU frequencies from second to second. When I played Call of Duty, I could see the GPU temperature going up from 47-degrees C to 52-degrees C as the action on the screen quickened up. The Asus 3D Vapor Chamber provides increased cooling performance.

Asus has provided a graphical user interface called Steam to manage the games on the machine. The G 752 costs Rs 79,990.

Game way to get a job

In its third year in India, the Taiwan Excellence Gaming Cup has grown to become a countrywide opportunity for young gamers. After regional competitions in Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, the tourney, moves to Kolkata this week (September 2-4), before the India finals in Mumbai (September 16-17).

The competition involves a team of five playing DOTA 2, a competitive game of action and strategy. TEGC has evolved into a platform for serious gamers who can take back home cumulative cash rewards of up to Rs 5 lakhs. The top India prize is Rs 2 lakhs.

An initiative of Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade, TEGC has also become a showcase for Indian gamers to display their talents to potential employers: gaming hardware makers like Acer, Asus, Genius, MSI, etc, are present as sponsors and are known to be snapping up good candidates.

Not all fun-n-games!

In recognition of serious games’ business potential in India, NASSCOM has formed a special interest group (SIG) — under the aegis of its Gaming Forum — and is hosting it’s first-ever industry get-together on applied games in Mumbai, on August 31.

Typically, serious games are meant to train, educate or promote, in sectors such as education, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, travel and logistics.

The event will see presentation of use cases of games in life-sciences; research and behavioural science methods applied in games and emerging technologies like virtual reality, holograms and artificial intelligence. The meeting will be hosted by TCS.

According to the latest FICCI-KPMG report, the gaming industry in India is growing at a brisk 14.3 per cent and will be a Rs 45 billion market by 2019. Earlier this month, a nonprofit All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) was formed in Mumbai. It will bring together all stakeholders including games operators, players, games developers and payment gateways.

— IndiaTechOnline