Intel Demonstrates Range of Mobile Products at Their BlizzCon Booth

Were catching up on some of the things we saw at BlizzCon last weekend with the Intel booth. Intel was a BlizzCon sponsor, providing hundreds of processors for the demo computers, so we noticed a ton of action happening at Intels booth. BlizzCon guests could participate in a scavenger quest and one of the tasks involved talking to an Intel exhibitor and getting the quest card stamped. We also saw lots of guests milling around several major gaming personalities who partnered with Intel during BlizzCon or taking pictures at the green screen.

Nonetheless, there were a bunch of Intel laptops, ultraportables, tablets, and hybrids around the booth, most of which unsurprisingly were running Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, which was created with touch-enabled devices in mind. We even noticed a bunch of people taking the hybrid laptop-tablets and flipping them into tablet mode just to experience playing the collectable card-game directly with their fingers and hands almost like a real card game. Hearthstone currently is only available on Windows PCs, OSX and the iPad so not many people have yet gotten the chance to play Hearthstone this way. The game graphics dont run buttery smooth on Intel integrated graphics, but being able to engage in Hearthstones lighthearted and mobile friendly gameplay from anywhere with WiFi is a delight for gamers.

Intel also invited a number of professional Starcraft II players and popular Twitch personalities into their booth. We caught PhantonL0rd, a popular Twitch streamer setting up to stream from one of the two Intel streaming stations.

We even saw professional North American Starcraft II players InControl, Scarlett, and Suppy playing Starcraft II between each other and with booth guests.

Towards the end of the last day when the booth was less packed, we took a closer look at the new HP Omen laptops the pros were using. This newly announced laptop was revealed only a few days before BlizzCon following in the current trend of thin and light gaming laptops. Aggressive cooling supports an i7 processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M with Optimus while carbon-like materials keep the weight under 5 lbs. The sharp, but minimalistic aesthetic keeps this HP laptop from looking as ostentatious as some other similarly priced $1300 gaming laptops out there. Opening the laptop lid to reveal a red-backlit keyboard with dedicated macro keys, large trackpad, and 1080p display resolution served to show off the HP Omens flavor.

Intel was delighted to have this much attention from BlizzCon attendees, particularly from those who came to try out Hearthstone on the Intel based tablets. Many mentioned they were waiting for Hearthstone to be ported onto Android tablets, Android smartphones, and iPhones, but were still quite impressed how complete PC Windows systems could be built into compact tablet, ultraportable, and hybrid design forms. We too can appreciate what Intel did for the show and hope to see them soon again.