Mobile Gaming Holds Brighter Future for Nvidia

By Kevin Parrish
published

Recognizing a shift in the gaming industry, Nvidia is allocating resources to better support the mobile sector.

Earlier this year at ECGC 2011, Nvidia's Tony Tamasi pointed to a monster rig sitting on the stage and said there will always be a market for gamers who want the industry's fastest GPUs and CPUs installed in their PCs.

And while Nvidia makes a pretty penny in both the consumer and business markets, the company is now seemingly recognizing the industry's shift over to the mobile and tablet segments. In an exclusive interview with Softpedia, Nvidia's Senior Product PR Manager for notebooks and Tegra Igor Stanek said that Nvidia is now allocating resources to the mobile segments.

According to Stanek, mobile gaming has gotten bigger than desktop PC gaming, as interest in gaming on the go – whether it's on a smartphone, tablet or laptop – is on the rise.

The interview initially focused on Nvidia's gaming laptop efforts, revealing that the company wants to make them more efficient by implementing its Optimus technology. As an example, to preserve battery life, power to the dedicated graphics card in laptops made by Alienware would be cut off when the rig isn't in gaming mode (rather than shift power to the on-board GPU). This should allow for 5 to 6 hours of actual runtime.

Nvidia is also recognizing its tablet and smartphone gamers. Much like it does with the PC sector (Epic Games especially), the GPU manufacturer is reaching out to mobile game developers to help them optimize their software for Tegra SOCs. Stanek points to the Tegra Zone app for Android as an example, indicating that consumers can find optimized games for their Tegra devices rather than sift through apps cluttering the Android Market and Amazon's Appstore.

Stanek added that it will be a while before tablets and mobile phones become proper gaming devices, but it won't be too long before they eclipse the Nintendo 3DS and Sony's upcoming PlayStation Vita. Strangely enough, he even said that they will eventually eclipse the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the PC itself.

Looking back to the monster gaming rig sitting on the stage at ECGC 2011, and Tony Tamasi saying that there will always be a market for the enthusiast PC gamer, the idea of smartphones and tablets actually eclipsing the PC sector just seems a little farfetched.

Kevin Parrish
42 Comments Comment from the forums
  • amk-aka-Phantom
    Looking back to the monster gaming rig sitting on the stage at ECGC 2011, and Tony Tamasi saying that there will always be a market for the enthusiast PC gamer, the idea of smartphones and tablets actually eclipsing the PC sector just seems a little farfetched.

    Thank you. Just "a little"? Lol.

    As long as nVidia and AMD keep making kick-ass GPUs, I'm fine - branch out to tablets and phones all you like.
    Reply
  • silverblue
    It IS a little far-fetched. The real estate and available power supply inside a PC affords you access to technology that simply will not fit inside a tablet without cutting it right down, and if things get smaller, who's to say they won't pack more inside the PC? Sure, PCs are still centred around an archaic layout, but more and more people are using uITX and mATX boards, newer breeds of CPU (and APU) are cutting down on motherboard complexity, and the number of ports, most of which you WILL use at some point, is getting larger. Some tablets don't even have room for expansion. Tablets also cost more than a decent HTPC which, albeit not mobile, will outclass the tablet in every area except power usage.
    Reply
  • atikkur
    PC today is so powerful than say 10 years ago.. but still far from the dreaming of virtual realism gaming. So please keep the cpu and gpu inovates, PC wont end soon.
    Reply
  • nforce4max
    The pc will be around for a long time to come and those that disagree don't have the vision to see that. At least another 20 years before it really begins to die off.
    Reply
  • Gamer-girl
    Nvidia is always looking for a greener future (both environmentally and economically)
    Reply
  • silverblue
    LOL. Greener future? Fermi wasn't exactly meeting the environmental nor economical targets that NVIDIA might have set itself. GT110 is a major improvement, though.
    Reply
  • sunflier
    greghomecough * AMD FUsion * cough * Intel's IGPs are leaping real quick * cough*Um, r u ok? Sounds like you need a cough drop or something.
    Reply
  • silverblue
    NVIDIA face a very tough fight in the lower end of the market. Intel have more than half the IGP market thanks to HD Graphics but AMD's Bobcat and Llano have better graphics and are selling very well. NVIDIA cannot directly compete in this area as they don't own a x86 licence. Even if they were to go with an ARM-based APU, it's not going to happen overnight.

    There will still be lots of people wanting low-to-mid discrete offerings with their CPUs, but it's a trend that is starting to wane and NVIDIA risk being forced out of the most lucrative segment of the market (as do a good number of graphics card producing firms, sadly).
    Reply
  • amk-aka-Phantom
    cough * AMD FUsion * cough * Intel's IGPs are leaping real quick * cough*

    Oh, for hell's sake, can everyone STOP talking about Fusion? It's USELESS! If you're not a gamer, Intel IGP is enough for everything - YouTube, HD videos, Aero... Fusion just takes it up on a new level that is not enough to run games properly but is overkill for an average consumer, so it's not needed.
    Reply
  • alikum
    amk-aka-phantomOh, for hell's sake, can everyone STOP talking about Fusion? It's USELESS! If you're not a gamer, Intel IGP is enough for everything - YouTube, HD videos, Aero... Fusion just takes it up on a new level that is not enough to run games properly but is overkill for an average consumer, so it's not needed.Think laptops, think portable. They DO need the graphics muscles in some instances. Not everyone needs to play games maxed out.
    Moreover, the Fusion you see today is just the beginning.
    Reply