Around 200 people attended Experience Day MCR Gaming 2024, held at the Madrid Sales Space and in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) was one of the main protagonists, highlighting its growing impact in the gaming sector. The day began with the presentation of the event by the sports journalist specialized in eSports, Sergio Perela. Next, and during the welcome to the attendees, both Pedro Quiroga, CEO of MCR, and Eduardo Moreno, general director of the company, made an assessment of the situation that the gaming business is going through and in which MCR is a reference, leader. of the brand, with a catalog with more than 48 brands and 2,000 product references. MCR managers agreed in pointing out that the first half of the year has been “worse than expected” and that therefore, the recovery in the second part of the year could take longer than desired. In terms of product lines, while laptops fall by more than 20%, monitors and graphics cards grow strongly.
Elena Toribio, Business Manager at GfK, analysed the current market situation, taking a snapshot of how it has performed so far in 2024. According to data from the consultancy firm, the installed PC fleet is not yet obsolete and would be having a harder time exceeding sales from previous years. “If we classify the devices (desktop and laptop PCs, monitors and peripherals) into Gaming and Non-Gaming, the performance of Gaming is less negative (-1.2% drop in Gaming versus -8.2% in Non-Gaming). In terms of categories, PCs would be the ones with the worst trend since peripherals invoice more than in 2023. Another fact worth highlighting is that the sales channel with the greatest participation is online, although in the case of monitors and peripherals, sales in physical stores are gaining ground. “In terms of seasonality, there are also differences if the sale is online, where 15% of the turnover in the last 12 months is concentrated in November (Black Friday, Cyber Monday), while in physical stores the Christmas campaign months (December and January) are more important,” said Toribio.
Specialized sessions and Networking
The event continued with sessions dedicated to different aspects of the gaming world. The first, “The presence of AI in gaming and video games” moderated by Nerea Luis, a doctor and AI consultant, also included the participation of the brands Intel, Samsung and Razer. As Luis pointed out, “artificial intelligence is now in an expansive moment and it is clear that it will increasingly be more transversal to any sector. We are going to see different types of AI and there will be one very close to the user in that assistant format, where AI will act as a copilot that will help to do tasks better, whether in the office automation or gaming sector. Then there is another type of artificial intelligence that will be more transparent to the user, that is, one that will not be seen so explicitly, and that related to gaming (we have mentioned several examples), has to do with better sound cleaning, having a higher image quality, the narrative within a video game, transmitting earlier… and that is related to the network infrastructure.”
Also during the day, two workshops were held by the YouTuber Toro Tocho, ‘Set up your gaming PCR’ and ‘Set Up for streaming’ with the collaboration of iiyama and in which the brand’s latest monitors were shown. Likewise, Experience Day MCR Gaming 2024 had an extensive leisure area with simulators, gaming PCs and consoles (Samsung, LG, MSI and iiyama), as well as a space to live an immersive Virtual Reality experience with HTC Vive.
