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

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 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. 

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 speakers to pop out the sides. Just what these grills 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 Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 – featuring a whole second screen that really did add to the experience. Innovations have always been below the surface in this world and it’s high time we saw more functional developments. After all, this year’s roster of gaming laptops has showed that internal upgrades can be minimal.

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 performance. To truly capture 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.