Turtle Beach is getting severe about PC gaming

Turtle Beach is a fairly large deal within the console house, however, like several good firm, it’s not content material with this market dominance alone. Turtle Beach is planning a brand new enlargement – one that may imply you see much more of its distinct palm tree brand round these components. The headset producer is taking its larger-than-life repute and audio experience and diving into the PC gaming market with three new tailor-made PC headsets: the Elite Atlas, Atlas Three, and Atlas One.

Turtle Beach is not any stranger to PC audio, however its core demographic has at all times been console gamers. After 12 lengthy years out there, the audio peripheral firm is lastly able to go up in opposition to the established PC peripheral firms. Turtle Beach is bringing every part it has discovered from its time creating for generations of consoles, however can also be ready to vary all of it up for PC patrons.

The Atlas lineup isn’t merely a console port – PC players in every single place shudder on the thought alone – it’s a spread of headsets custom-tailored to skilled PC players. Specifically, they’re constructed for the primary group in CS:GO proper now, Astralis. The top-ranked group partnered with Turtle Beach again in May 2017, and since then has performed an enormous half in moulding the upcoming Atlas gaming headset lineup right into a championship-winning product, and one which Turtle Beach is ready to pit in opposition to the strict competitors.

“For a player and as a team, it’s a privilege to be involved in the making of a headset like this,” Astralis participant dev1ce says. “We’ve tested and provided a lot feedback and suggestions during the development process to try to ensure it’s the best possible headset for esports pros, but also to use for any PC gamers.”

The template for the Elite Atlas has been “hiding in plain sight” for over a 12 months – because the Turtle Beach group places it – within the type of the Turtle Beach Elite Pro utilized by the Astralis group because it battled its option to the world’s prime rank. The audio curve from that headset has been distilled into the Turtle Beach Atlas vary. And if CS:GO isn’t your sport, the group labored with the likes of the OWL Houston Outlaws and OpTic Gaming to search out the very best grasp curve that matches throughout a spread of video games.

It’s exhausting to discover a median that works for everybody. But it’s necessary work that the professional groups knew needed to be accomplished for Turtle Beach’s PC inauguration to have an effect within the extremely aggressive PC gaming headset market. A headset constructed for a console simply wasn’t going to chop it.

“Typically, the sound profiles that PC gamers need are different from a console gamer,” Nick Bourne, director of product and partnerships, says. “The sound profiles of PC games such as CS:GO, Dota, League of Legends, Overwatch, etc., lean towards the mid and the high frequencies over bass/low frequencies… our Atlas series has been specifically tuned to make those mid and high frequencies more prominent, which equates to a better audio experience and crystal-clear team chat on PC.”

And it’s not simply the $99 (£90) Elite headset that’s getting the total esports remedy, both. The $79 (£70) Atlas Three and $49 (£40) Atlas One each characteristic that very same refined grasp curve, albeit with completely different {hardware} and options to cater to the range and individuality that burns vivid within the PC gaming world from the bottom up.

If you need quantity, the Atlas Three with its battery-amplified audio and 50mm drivers is your finest choose. Entry-level gaming is the area of the Atlas One, nevertheless, which regardless of shedding a few of the value premium, nonetheless options glasses-friendly reminiscence foam ear cups, 40mm drivers, and a steel headband able to surviving nearly something you may throw at it.

Turtle Beach actually has the gumption to push its manner into the PC market. “If we’ve done a good job, PC gamers are going to have three great new products to choose from,” Turtle Beach CEO, Juergen Stark, says. And he’s no stranger to PC gaming himself. Stark’s flight sim rig is not any half measure.

“I’m sure that the PC audience will be completely stunned to know that the CEO of Turtle Beach is building a very high-end PC rig at home,” he says.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be so shocked. PC gaming is in every single place; it’s the mainstream. With esports prize swimming pools surpassing £20 million and streamers making megabucks off the newest PC titles, it’s no surprise Turtle Beach needs to get entangled. Despite the gaming headset market’s latest and large monetary success because of Fortnite, Stark says that Turtle Beach’s transfer into PC gaming isn’t solely down to 1 sport: “PC is certainly booming, it grew rapidly last year as well, even ahead of all the Fortnite trend, but that certainly helped give us a push here to say now’s the time.”

It’ll be price watching what Turtle Beach can actually do with the open expanse of PC gaming forward of it. This is simply the beginning of a PC ecosystem in ready from Turtle Beach. In the meantime, we’ve received the Elite Atlas, Atlas Three, and Atlas One to stay up for – gaming headsets from a console large which were actually constructed from the bottom up for PC players.