marketing and sales in talking about how we do meetings with retail with a new brand, when you can’t go and sit down with the people in Best Buy or Argos or wherever you’re trying to sell your products. Also, I don’t know if it was unexpected, but gaming is a crazy
market. It’s moving fast. It’s a place everyone wants to get into. Whether luxury clothing or tech or whatever, they want to get in there, because they’ve all heard about this group of consumers that have a lot of money to spend. Navigating that and making sure that we stay true to our story by making sure that we continue to build on why we are here in the eyes of the gamer, because it is a little bit ‘wild west’ and gamers tolerate no bullshit.
We’re now facing a cost of living crisis. Will gamers be seeking value products and will that be a challenge? I think what you’ll see is they’ll probably just wait a little longer before they go out and get their new purchase. Gamers are one of the groups of consumers I’ve worked with in my career that are the most demanding. They are the most certain in what they want and have a lot of requirements, too, from the quality, the tech, the look and everything. I’m not certain they’re going to compromise on that. I think they’re probably going to postpone it a bit before they go out and make a purchase for the next peripheral they’re looking for. That would be my guess, just looking at the mentality of gamers and how they consume brands.
What is your focus and what audio trends will you be looking to capitalise on? Wireless is definitely a big focus for us. We see it as a high growth market within gaming audio. For us that’s about how we can optimise on the audio, low latency, and then multi connectivity in our wireless portfolio. So that’s a trend we’re tapping into, and where we’re really looking at how we can continue to improve. And then with in-ear… especially out in APAC, mobile gaming is
huge, but also the versatility of product use. If I’m sitting here talking to you, and then I’m moving on to gaming, and then I’m jumping into some transportation, do I want to have to shift my headset for every single use case, or are there options out there that give me versatility but that still give me the best gaming and entertainment experience? So that’s also an area we definitely believe needs a big focus and that we’re constantly looking at: those multi-connectivity products and products that you can kind of bring with you during your day.
What’s been the most unexpected challenge you’ve had to face over the last couple of years? The pandemic! Who would have thought that suddenly the world would shut down and you couldn’t go to a store? That was really strange for us all and there was a close collaboration between
44 | MCV/DEVELOP July 2022
And the most unexpected highlight? The really highly competitive markets. And that we’ve gotten really positive feedback on coming out as a new brand and saying that with quality audio you can truly change your gaming experience. It was worth engaging in that conversation. We believe in that, and we believed the market was ready for that. But you never know until you go out there and do it, right. That’s been really exciting to see that there are people out there that want to engage in that dialogue.
“EPOS has given the market a new perspective of audio, what quality audio can do and what quality audio is”
Where do you hope EPOS will be at for its third anniversary? You know, I like big visions. I would really love to see that EPOS has given the market a new perspective of audio, what quality audio can do and what quality audio is. Audio is a very subjective thing as it very much depends on what you’re used to in your daily life. But you know, really getting that dialogue around audio in games and peripherals to another level - we’ve been talking a lot about graphics in gaming for many years - that’s exciting to have the opportunity to go out and impact the market. We’re launching BrainAdapt, which is at the core of our audio
philosophy and expertise due to our ownership within the Demant group, about how the human brain processes audio. So how do you take audio that comes through some kind of device and make sure it gets as natural and as real and as easy for the brain to process as possible? And how does that impact your competitive edge in CS:GO, for example; reaction time, these kinds of things. How does that expertise impact how immersed you can get into a game? A year from now, I really want to celebrate that we got that story out and we started to talk to the market about that specifically.
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