Acer has answered an age-old PC gaming question with its latest concept laptop

Acer DualPlay announcement event at IFA 2024
(Image credit: Future)

Buttons or keys? It's a question that's divided PC players for generations (well, a couple of decades) but ultimately we all know some games are made for a set of joysticks and others need that mouse and keyboard combo. Makers of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best gaming laptops seem to have ignored this inconvenient truth, until Acer

The brand showed off its latest concept project, dubbed 'DualPlay' at IFA this week. A gaming laptop trackpad that can physically detach from the main chassis, revealing a full gamepad underneath. It adds a fair chunk🔯 to the palm wrest section of the laptop, but takes unique advantage of new taller 16:10 displays to add extra functionality to the experience overall. Each side is set out as you would expect, with an Xbox-style asymmetrical layout, but can also be split for a more Nintendo Switch-like experience. 

Acer DualPlay concept laptop on showfloor at IFA 2024

(Image credit: Future)

For the concept demonstration, the whole device is tacked onto a Predator gaming laptop, but there's more than an extra set of buttons here. Releasing the controller from its trackpad prison also allows two external speak꧋ers to pop out the sides. Just what these gri♕lls are doing when you're using a standard keyboard setup is unknown, but it's a neat feature by itself.

Obviously, Project DualPlay is only a concept and likely won't make it to market in its current state. However, there are very few real experiential innovations taking place in the gaming laptop world at the moment. The last time we saw any real change to the established clamshell design was the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 - featuring a whole second screen that really did add t༒o the experience. Innovations have always been below the surface in this world and it's high time we saw more functional developments. A🔴fter all, this year's roster of gaming laptops has showed that internal upgrades can be minimal.

Acer DualPlay demonstration

(Image credit: Future)

We've had no new graphics cards to play with and Intel's 14th generation CPUs offer up marginal iterative upgrades in terms of sheer gaming per🌟formance. To truly captur♔e audience imagination, and drive excitement around new releases, brands are going to need to keep experimenting with exactly what a gaming laptop has to offer for the entire play experience as a whole - especially now that 100+fps framerates are rapidly becoming the norm.