Gaming enthusiasts are now quite open to customising their devices to get the best out of their gaming PCs, according to Prakash Mallya, VP and MD – Sales, Marketing and Communications Group, Intel India.

Mallya, in an interview with BusinessLine, gave insights on gaming in India and Intel’s strategy to leverage the boom in PC gaming in the country. Excerpts here:

What new trends have emerged in the PC gaming segment in India?

Gamers are very open towards building their machines. They do overclocking, as an example. We have a large community of channel partners that cater to that need. So that community is going to be very rich and thriving.

The other big part is community gaming, and the esports construct is a great element that fuels the ecosystem. I do see that elements come together in India, but it's at a very early stage.

The overall industry’s appetite is good in an extremely young market and very high in terms of quality of experience that it demands.

What are the opportunities for the PC gaming segment to grow in India over the next few quarters?

In terms of penetration, on PC gaming, we can go the distance. It is still very low, as compared to most parts of the world. In terms of the number of gaming PCs that can be sold, the potential is much higher.

The demand and growth are going to continue. Suppose the trends suggest that there is a very large population footprint already right across mobile gaming, and PC gaming. It is 304 million for mobile to 30 odd million for PC. The potential to grow is very significant. Covid or even past Covid.

Last I checked, in India, gaming PCs versus your total PC is still single digit in terms of the percentage, and it can go much higher. But overall, in India, the penetration on PCs is just 60 million or so on a population of 1.3 billion.

As you look at the gaming evolution, the infrastructure overall, the server and data centre component plays a huge role.

How can PC gaming be made more affordable?

In the gaming segment, as it has grown, so have been the variety of price points. I wouldn't say the job is done; we will continue to explore how we can enable a better experience in the platforms we come up with. But the biggest trend when I look into the future is the trend of gaming as a service.

The country will also evolve to cloud gaming, where service providers, game publishers, or telecom service providers, or combination of those guys can deliver cloud gaming as a service, and then you need to pay a monthly subscription to get signed up for that experience.

What is Intel’s strategy to leverage the PC gaming segment in India?

There's a lot of work we're doing with our OEM customers and our e-commerce partners and retailers to ensure that we have a wide variety of platforms available to PC gamers.

We are looking to ramp up and fuel the growth even further.

Its foundation would be collaboration like Marvel Avengers, co-engineering and co-marketing efforts with game developers and publishers. We will have global engagements, but we will also do local engagements of those same global partnerships.

Has the boom in mobile gaming impacted the PC gaming segment? What factors influence the shift to larger screens?

Gaming per se has increased in terms of usage. India's number two market globally comes to gamers, but if you double click on that data, you will also see that a large part of it is mobile gamers.

While you can game on the phone, PC, because of the large screen can deliver a quality experience. It delivers a variety of games that the PC ecosystem offers. We see a very large potential. According to an Intel-Kantar study that we did 90 per cent of the mobile gamers have a preference to move to a PC. And when they evaluate the PC for devices to game on, they look at CPUs, GPUs, and look at RAM as some of the key elements or yardsticks or criteria to think about before they invest in the right technology.

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