The 4Cs driving gaming innovation

For the 1.4 billion strong global PC gaming community, gaming is not just a hobby but a way of life. It’s how they connect, cultivate a sense of community, enhance new life skills like teamwork and resource management, sharpen their instincts, and even earn a living. Passionate gamers revere and revel in the experience. Immersed in vivid virtual worlds, they find themselves liberated – free to unravel their identities and to push the limits of their imagination.

Luckily for this group, and in large part because of their passion, the industry continues to step up with purpose-built technologies that fuel their fervor. These are the four key areas of advancements that are enabling immersive gaming experiences like never before.

Captivation: Games are increasingly becoming an all-encompassing medium for people to experience rich story arcs, role play as engaging characters, and even form long lasting friendships online. Research shows that gaming hit an all-time high last year with fascinating visuals, ultra-realistic physics and sophisticated AI that come to life in dynamic characters, objects, and weather elements. Innovations in computer resolution and performance are making these virtual worlds better year after year. CPU performance enhancements, great graphics and fast storage make players feel like they are stepping into an alternate universe.

For instance, gaming laptops powered by 11th Gen Intel® CoreTM H-series processors unlock cutting-edge performance that enables more advanced simulations, more intelligent NPCs (non-player characters) and advances increasingly vast and engaging open worlds with more interactive objects. We see 4K graphics and ray-tracing effects starting to become mainstream in more and more games, and we are exploring how technologies like variable rate shading can provide smooth and consistent gameplay under these demanding gaming workloads.

In fact, Intel’s Xe graphics architecture is purpose built to scale the breadth of the GPU spectrum from the efficiency and mobility focused Xe LP architecture to the gaming and enthusiast focused Xe HPG architecture.

Co-operation: Many of the games today emphasize co-operative gameplay experiences – after all, gaming is better with friends! This also helps gamers develop and refine valuable life skills like effective collaboration, sharing experiences, team resource management, etc. While desktop setups are better for streaming or experimenting with mods, laptops help you easily game from a friend’s couch or a coffee shop. An ultraportable gaming laptop comes in handy here to game between classes or after work. Innovation across form factors and desktop and mobile genres today reflects this trend.

Competition: Competitive gaming is about racing, battling, and maneuvering with and against other players from around the world. It’s a dynamic experience that spans esports athletes playing CS:GO to casual gamers simply unwinding with Rocket League. The critical requirement here is smooth responsive gameplay with no FPS drops and low latency connections. The industry is stepping up to help address these demands in thinner, more powerful gaming laptops. Intel is co-engineering laptops for desktop-caliber gameplay that you can take anywhere, enabling up to 75% lower latency and 3x faster speeds with Intel® KillerTM Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+). Rapid advancements in 5G and cloud gaming technologies will push the envelope even further as people play online from anywhere.

Community: Online gaming communities are growing fast and are more vibrant and inclusive than ever before. Whether it’s streaming, modding or game-specific forums, much of what makes the experience rewarding is a sense of community. Especially through the pandemic, people have turned to gaming for healthy and uplifting connections. Intel is supporting this goal by leading anti-toxicity efforts, supporting more diverse streamers, and even creating the AI-based Bleep app to automatically remove offensive language. Communities are at the heart of gaming and that’s good for all gamers as it attracts more players, fans, sponsors, and investment.

Gaming is here to stay and has a bright future ahead. The industry is collaborating more closely and innovating more rapidly than ever before to ensure gamers can find the PC, gameplay and communities that are right for them. There is much to look forward to in terms of the technologies that come next, and the gaming experiences they’ll make possible. Indeed, we are just getting started!

{{{short}}}
{{#more}}
… Read More
{{/more}}

{{/totalcount}}
{{^totalcount}}

Start a Conversation