Top 3 Trends at PAX West 2016

PAX West is here again. You can always count on some old standbys, like the annual installation—this year's was a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex that attendees could walk on top of.

But it’s also clear how much the industry is changing.

The three major themes? VR, live streaming, and eSports.

Envisioning a VR future

During last year’s PAX West, VR was an exclusive experience; perhaps you got an opportunity to try the Oculus if you were one of the lucky few, but, with wait times exceeding 3 hours, odds were pretty slim.

This year was a totally different story: Most major booths had some kind of VR kit, including dedicated VR demo stations and rooms. In the blink of an eye, VR has become ubiquitous—if not in households, at least in the expo hall.

VR is the future of gaming, and we want our latest product offerings to reflect this. We also want VR to be attainable for everyday gamers. That’s why we demoed some of our favorite VR-ready machines at PAX this year, including the G752 — a gaming powerhouse with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070—and the G20, a compact desktop with up to a GTX 1080 to power VR at 90 FPS (frames per second). With these new VR-ready machines, any gamer can have mind-blowingly immersive experiences like none other.

Living to livestream

Meanwhile, Twitch and other livestreaming services continue to revolutionize how gamers watch their favorite players and playthroughs. For the very first time, PAX West featured broadcaster zones and “streaming pods,” allowing streamers to set up and broadcast directly from the showfloor. Livestreaming is firmly embedded in gaming culture, and it finally felt fully legitimized during this year’s PAX West.

We also know how critical it is for livestreamers to broadcast from anywhere—their livelihoods depend on it. Unfortunately, the intensive hardware required by PC livestreaming often prevents this flexibility—most livestreamers are still reliant upon desktops and can’t take their show on the road. That’s why we decided to demo the super-portable, ultra-lightweight GL502 at our PAX West booth this year. It’s one of the lightest gaming laptops on the market today. Plus, with an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, the indomitable NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, and up to 32GB OF DDR4, it’s the perfect machine for heavyweight tasks like livestreaming and video editing. With a laptop like this in your arsenal, you can game and stream on the go.

Serious tools for gaming pros

The power of eSports was palpable throughout PAX, with gamers raring to go pro prowling the halls amidst a growing array of accessories like PC gaming chairs, mechanical keyboards, super-sensitive mice, and even personalizable jerseys.

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It’s critical for pros to have the right tools—like the incredible GX700 and GX800, the world’s first-ever liquid-cooled gaming laptops. GX800 runs two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 SLI GPUs, allowing 4K ultra-HD gaming on the go. Gone are the days of being limited to a leviathan desktop computer for insanely good PC gaming. We believe eSports pros should be able to game from anywhere without compromising on performance, and this machine allows you to do just that.

And it's not just about laptops: our displays are also built for serious gamers. Our lineup includes monitors with IPS for better colors, clarity, and viewing angles, plus G-SYNC and 144Hz refresh rates to avoid vertical tearing and lag. We’ve even got an ultra-widescreen monitor that replaces the need for dual displays. Tech specs aside, these monitors are also showstoppers. In fact, passers-by stopped to stare at our GX800 setup running Doom in widescreen mode on the stunning, curved ROG Swift PG348Q. “That's pretty slick,” commented one observer. “This is a monitor I'm looking to buy, as crazy as that seems,” said another. It clearly managed to make a lasting impression.

Innovating for a changing industry

Whether you’re a VR aficionado, a livestreamer, or a pro gamer in the eSports arena, Republic of Gamers has something to offer: from VR-ready laptops and lightweight desktops, to ultra-portable multimedia powerhouses, to watercooled gaming leviathans that can still be thrown in a bag before hitting the road. We hope you agree that each new product only brings us closer to our goal: empowering gamers to reach their fullest potential with the coolest and most compelling new pro gaming hardware on the market today. We can't wait to show you what else we've got in store!

 

By Kimberly Koenig