Acer wants a bigger slice of the gaming pie

Not only is New York Zoe’s native land but it also the spot Acer chose to present their “Next@Acer” event for 2015. It’s an interesting move from the tech company. As opposed to scattering a host of launch events during the course of the year they throw one massive launch for the year to showcase their line. Feed the journalists once and get it out of the way so you can spend marketing budget on what matters. According to Acer CEO, Jason Chen, the company sells more than 100 000 devices every day. Earlier today they launched 40 new products, yup, 40.

Their focus has always been consumer notebooks and, while they weren’t the first, they are the current leaders in the 2-in-1 market. For some reason, gadget companies the world over seem to think that launching a mid range smartphone and fitness wearable is imperative, even though Chen says there is only one smartphone manufacturer making actual profit in the industry (brownie points if you guess which one). Despite his statements at the launch, Acer is going to keep on pumping out smartphones including a Windows phone and Windows wearable. Apparently, they realise that their phones can’t be everything to everyone so they’re launching phones for business folk. The Liquid X2 does have a 4000 mAh battery though… so that’s not too shabby.

The real story of the day though is the company’s turn towards the gaming industry. I’m noticing more tech companies attempting to break into the space. Can they smell your money?

Acer introduced their Predator gaming devices utilising some sweaty looking sport folk in their marketing video (which confused me to no end. Can Geoff run?). While they showed some really funky looking black and red devices that had a construction aesthetic with a reptile design feel they didn’t tell us much more.

The Predator Desktop will be available in the third quarter of this year. It looks rather vicious design-wise but, other than that, Acer isn’t sharing much more detail. There’s also a new gaming notebook that you can expect. The Acer reps admit that their V Nitro just couldn’t compete with the Ferraris in the market but this new offering – the Predator notebook – will. Again, not much detail on what’s actually under the hood (see these car references flying here?) but it is available in 15″ and 17″. The keyboard includes programmable buttons and shortcut customisations. There’s massive cooling set ups on the back to handle the “incredible” computing and graphics processors. The company also added subwoofers for better sound. While they were at it Acer also introduced their “gaming tablet” which includes haptic feedback. I wasn’t completely sold on this one but then I’m hardly ever sold on tablets.

My favourite announcement in the Acer Predator range was the Predator Z35. It’s a curved monitor offering up ultrawide viewing with a 35″ 2:19 display. It brags stutter free visuals by Nvidia G-SYNC  as well as powerful DTS sound.

While the Predator range looks rather menacing I was left wanting. It’s hard to make a decisive call on something when you’re given very little information on what it can actually do.

Last Updated: April 24, 2015