Affordable gaming on the go
There's an interesting report over at Digitimes about MSI facing fierce competition from Acer and Asus in the gaming laptop market. According to the report, MSI will attempt to defend its share of the gaming notebook market by offering a series of price cutting promotions and investing more into its marketing efforts.
It's the former strategy that intrigues me, as gaming laptops are already relatively affordable. Looking back, Gateway's P-7811 FX laptop was one of the first mobile gaming systems to set this trend in motion -- it had an Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile P8400 processor clocked at 2.26GHz, 4GB of DDR3-1066 RAM, 200GB Seagate Momentus hard drive (7,200 RPM), and GeForce 9800M GTS graphics, all for around $1,400. Not too shabby for 2008.
I purchased one for myself and still have it, though I've gone through two more laptops since then, the most recent of which is the Asus ROG G751JY-DB72. It's a higher end gaming notebook than the Gateway model ever was, and also more expensive, but at $2,100 street, it's several hundred below MSRP ($2,500).
You don't need to spend that much on a capable gaming laptop. For example, Gigabyte's P55W v4 streets for $1,300 and includes an Intel Core i7-5700HQ processor, 8GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, DVD burner, and GeForce GTX 970M (3GB GDDR5) graphics. For another $100, you can bump up to a 128GB mSATA SSD and still keep the 1TB HDD for storage tasks.
The P55W v4 is a bit more comparable to the type of system the P-7811 FX was several years ago, albeit in a 15.6-inch form factor. That means the P-7811 FX wasn't an anomaly, but the beginning of a trend that continues today.
Circling back to MSI and its reported plan to offer price cutting promotions, consumers looking for a new gaming laptop should keep a close eye on things to see what develops. We could be on the verge of a price war, or at least a price scuffle, between MSI, Asus, and Acer, the latter of which recently announced new Predator models.
"Since Acer does not have advantages in brand recognition, [our] sources expect the vendor to resort to low price strategies," Digitimes reports.
The report doesn't mention companies like Gigabyte, but given the value proposition of the P55W v4, it's another company to watch closely over the next several weeks.
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1K6s8th
