Scott Herkelman recently joined NVIDIA as GeForce GTX general manager. Scott is a founder and CEO of BFG, which he built into a premier graphics card gaming brand. He’s also an avid gamer, and would rather be rocket-jumping than casting spells.
PC gaming enthusiasts are demanding customers. Just ask Frank Azor at Dell’s Alienware unit. Or Wallace Santos at Maingear. Or Kelt Reeves at Falcon Northwest. I know this breed well. As a co-founder and CEO of BFG – and an avid gamer – I quickly learned the most demanding customers always have time for someone with something special to offer.
Their customers want the latest processors, the best graphics cards, and the fastest memory modules. They built their companies by knowing their way around a motherboard. And they’re not going to accept a commodity PC that struggles to grunt its way through a two-year-old first-person shooter. Word is that consumers are choosing tablets over cheap PCs, but the PC gaming segment isn’t just alive. It’s thriving.
Diablo III is one example of why the PC is the premier gaming platform.
Regardless of what they can spend, gamers want the latest technology, and with our new Kepler GPU architecture, we’ve been delivering it. That’s why I’m so excited to join NVIDIA right now. In March, NVIDIA’s high-end GeForce GTX 680 desktop GPU caused a sensation by offering better performance – while running quieter and cooler. NVIDIA is now bringing those benefits to the mainstream with the $220 GeForce GTX 660, and $109 GTX 650 launched last month. Both use the Kepler architecture to offer more performance, and deliver that performance with the best power efficiency.
These new products couldn’t be arriving at a better time. New games and new business models have put the PC at the center of the gaming industry once again. New technologies supported by our Kepler GPUs, such as PhysX and DirectX 11, make new PC games such as “World Of Warcraft: Mists Of Pandaria,” and “Borderlands 2,” more responsive, more cinematic and more fun. New business models such as ‘free to play,’ are giving more gamers a chance to try premium content.
New content is generating demand for new hardware. While Gartner reports the broader PC market is flat, globally; gaming specialists such Alienware, Maingear, and Falcon Northwest are thriving. In June, Falcon Northwest added the Tiki, a compact micro-tower to its lineup. In September, Alienware added the X51 micro-tower to its lineup. Last month, Maingear piled in with an all-in-one PC, the Alpha. NVIDIA’s latest Kepler GPUs are helping these businesses build distinctive products – such as Maingear’s new NOMAD 17 gaming laptop, which is equipped with NVIDIA mobile GPUs and a choice of six glossy colors – for a market where consumers are tired of cheap, me-too machines.
Talk to the entrepreneurs behind these powerful new machines and it’s impossible not to get excited about PC gaming. “All the great new titles are coming out for PCs,” says Falcon Northwest founder Kelt Reeves, who has built PCs for gamers for more than twenty years now. “It’s nice to see everyone bullish on PC gaming again.”
Tagged: Corporate, Gaming, GeForce, gpu, kepler, NVIDIA, PC Gaming, Scott Herkelman
