PC hardware and components maker MSI has created a new website portal to provide PC gamers with an online tool that melds a game release calendar with PC hardware requirements specifications details. Not very surprisingly, MSI leverages the site to recommend MSI-made components, PCs and peripherals that match the minimum/recommended specs for each game.
MSI's 'The right gear for the game' page is headed by a clickable timeline under which there is a grid of popular new-ish releases. More usefully there is a search facility which allows refinement of results by genre and title. According to MSI the provided hardware spec recommendations come from "its close relationship with selected game developers and hardware partners in the gaming industry". That is interesting – will we learn about various PC game minimum and recommended specs here first in the future, rather than via developer blogs and so on – we shall have to wait and see.
Eric van Beurden, Marketing Director at MSI talked a little about the impetus to develop the online tool; "Through social media and on gaming events, we often receive questions from gamers about which hardware they should get to build a PC powerful enough to play a new game. Many times we see gamers spend money on gear they don’t necessarily need to play a game on high settings. And we also see people buying a complete new PC, while in reality they only needed an upgrade of their motherboard platform or graphics card to reach a decent performance. The gaming hardware advisor can help gamers to make the right choice."
Giving the online tool a test run I searched for an upcoming blockbuster release, Quantum Break by Remedy Entertainment/Microsoft Studios. We covered that game's hardware requirements in the news as it emerged that it would be a DirectX 12 only title for PC.
MSI's new tool correctly advised of the minimum PC system requirements and also correctly recommended an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 card for smooth gameplay (adding its own branded product information and shopping link). Furthermore the firm recommended one of its own AiO 27-inch 1080p computers, the Gaming 27 6QE, with 6th generation Intel Core i7 Processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M 8GB. Lower down in the recommendations MSI sought to upsell the Nightblade X2 desktop system which offers the core performance components of a 6th Gen Intel Core i7-6700K quad-core processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 980Ti graphics – that's good enough for Ultra settings thus configured, with 16GB of RAM. And why not splash out on MSI gaming PC peripherals too – suggests a 'feature' further down the page.
Overall one might say that the tool is more enterprising than interesting. However if MSI can deliver on its hinted gaming industry insider info, to release hardware specs before they are widely known, that could make a big difference to the appeal of the tool.
