Weapons of choice

Posted by: Veed

We all know that professional sportsmen swear by a certain brand of golf club, football boot or tennis racquet. But how important is the right kind of equipment when it comes to professional video gamers?

Those of you that have been following the gaming scene closely will already have noticed the wide range of gaming peripherals on the market today. Mainstream manufacturers like Logitech and Microsoft have a more expensive range specifically targeted at gamers who want a special ‘edge’. And then there are a number of companies like Razer and Steelseries who release very high tech, and equally highly priced gaming products.

But the question is, do these expensive products really help gamers play better?

London Mint manager Sujoy Roy says: “In the early days of gaming there was a lot of rubbish on the market - regular mice and keyboards just spiced up with flashy lights. Thankfully it's all changed now and we see a lot of genuinely good gaming hardware.

For example, with computer mice, gaming has helped push the boundaries from the cruddy ball mouse people were using in the days of Doom. Today, the optical sensors on gaming mice have incredible accuracy and tracking.

However, the ultimate result of these leaps in technology is that the cheap mice a lot of manufacturers make are also very sensitive and accurate, sometimes rivalling their top-of-the-range products.”

The range of innovative gaming products doesn't end at just computer mice and keyboards. Players looking for an edge can pick from a wide variety of products, all of which vow to help them improve their game.

What good is a gaming mouse, for instance, without the latest mousepad to rest it on. Then you'll need a quality set of headphones, in order to hear even the faintest of footsteps around the corner. Inside the PC, you'll find the very best hardware set aside for gamers, including the hard drive, memory, graphics card and CPU.

That’s probably why Roy claims that a lot of advances in computer technology have been spurred on by video games. “It's the desire for a more powerful gaming rig that has made computers so fast today,” he insists.