While PC gamers have long claimed that the medium can be better than the best consoles, few have made the same claim with laptops. There are some excellent gaming laptops out there with specs that rival gaming PCs. However, not only are they extremely expensive, but the gaming experience can’t compare. Laptops simply were not designed with gaming in mind.
But could that be about to change? Gaming laptops provide the benefit of portability, and you can take them everywhere. If you do take your gaming laptop out often, take a look at these important things to know about laptop insurance. This is an extremely expensive device that’s easy to steal. You may have to add it specifically to your contents insurance.
The question is whether their benefit can go beyond portability. Here are the ways they may soon outperform consoles.
The Demise of Screens
One of the ways in which consoles and gaming PCs have improved over the years is in the quality of what appears on the screen. Everything from the screen itself to the graphics card installed determines how the game looks and flows before your eyes. Gaming laptops have the distinct disadvantage that the screen is always going to be more compact and less adaptable.
But screens may soon be on their way out. The next big thing in gaming is almost certainly a major shift to VR. We have already seen some excellent games in VR, and the Oculus Go has already managed to package the experience in a compact way. With the power of a laptop, VR gaming can give you the experience we’ve been working towards.
However, you may well ask why laptops would be better than other consoles in this regard. After all, VR will work with them too.
Modularity
The difference comes down to modularity. In comparison to just about any other device, laptops can be extremely modular. You can build a laptop from scratch with the specific components you want for the best possible experience. As time goes by and better parts are introduced to the market, you can continually upgrade.
Consoles are certainly not designed to be treated this way. And while that can change, laptops have the advantage of decades in this regard. You may find yourself choosing to discard your console in favor of something that is able to continue meeting your requirements no matter what changes.
One of the reasons this is important is because the introduction of VR allows for the development of new games that do not follow the same incremental improvements of previous mediums. An exciting new game may require entirely different specs than what you have at present. Instead of having to buy a whole new console, you can upgrade what you have by switching out the necessary parts.
The Counterpoint
Of course, just because laptops have a decades-long advantage in terms of modularity does not guarantee they will triumph as the best gaming platform. We’ve recently seen how Skype somehow dropped a similar advantage to be outdone by Zoom when it mattered most. The reason was because Skype was too tied to what it had been in the past.
In the same way, laptops may prove us wrong simply because another medium will prove to be more disruptive. New consoles may be more willing to shake up what came before. Laptop makers might find this more difficult, whether because of myopathy among the manufacturers or because of expectations of brands that still need to be met.
It therefore remains to be seen whether the modularity of laptops will be an advantage when the shift to VR is more definitive. However, as things stand, the outlook is positive for the gaming laptop industry.
