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Adgully Bureau
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By: Kaustubh K. Jadhav, Co-founder, ARC
Gaming hardware is usually marketed through numbers: higher frame rates, more compute, faster memory and larger power envelopes. But for Indian gamers especially those playing on phones, laptops and emerging handheld devices the most meaningful measure of performance is often not what a device can achieve for five minutes. It is what it can sustain comfortably for an hour or two.
That distinction matters because gaming in India developed under very different conditions from markets built around fixed consoles and desktop PCs. India had 591 million active gamers in FY24, 66% of them from non-metro cities, and 43% were first-time earners between 18 and 30. Average gaming time rose to 13 hours per week in 2024, up from about 10 hours previously. This is a young, increasingly committed audience, but also one highly conscious of value and accustomed to gaming on personal, portable devices.
As sessions lengthen, the gap between peak benchmark performance and the experience a player actually lives with becomes harder to ignore.
For this player, comfort is not cosmetic. It determines whether hardware fits into everyday life.
A gaming session may happen on a bed, sofa, during travel, between classes or after work. Unlike a desktop, a portable device places its weight, heat and controls directly in the user’s hands. Additional weight, poorly positioned controls or a grip that becomes uncomfortable after forty minutes can matter more than a modest benchmark advantage.
Ergonomics should therefore be understood as a performance feature. If a device can technically deliver high frame rates but becomes tiring to hold, that performance has limited practical value. Weight distribution, grip shape, button reach and screen size all determine how long someone can comfortably play.
Battery life creates a similar reality check.
Portable gaming stops being portable if the player is constantly searching for a charger. Higher processor power can increase frame rates, but it also increases energy consumption and heat. Research into mobile processors consistently identifies the trade-off between performance, power density and device temperature. The engineering challenge is not simply to maximise compute, but to find the point at which additional performance stops improving the overall experience.
For an Indian player, that trade-off can be particularly important. Portable devices may be used while commuting, travelling or moving between college, office and home. In those situations, a stable 45 or 60 frames per second for several hours may be more useful than a short burst of higher performance that rapidly consumes the battery.
Heat is the third part of the equation and perhaps the most underestimated.
Compact electronics have little room to dissipate heat. Research on mobile platforms shows that higher performance increases power density and surface temperature, while thermal-management systems eventually reduce processor frequency to remain within safe limits. A device that benchmarks well when cold can therefore behave very differently after sustained use.
This matters even more in gaming because games create long, simultaneous CPU and GPU workloads. Research specifically examining smartphone thermals has documented user discomfort associated with devices heating up during demanding use. In a handheld device, thermals are not merely a reliability issue; they are something the player physically feels.
India adds another variable: ambient conditions. A portable gaming device designed and tested primarily in a cool environment may behave differently in a warm bedroom, train compartment or during summer travel. Cooling architecture, vent placement, fan acoustics and the temperature of surfaces touching the hands consequently become part of the experience.
The lesson is that sustained performance matters more than peak performance.
A device capable of 100 frames per second briefly before throttling is not automatically better than one engineered to maintain 60 consistently. The same applies to resolution. On a compact display, rendering at extremely high native resolutions can consume substantial power for a visual benefit that may be difficult to perceive. Intelligent upscaling, dynamic resolution and optimisation can produce a better overall balance.
This is where software becomes as important as silicon. A lean operating system, efficient background processes, good frame pacing and intelligent power profiles can extract more useful performance from the same hardware. Portable gaming will increasingly be judged by performance-per-watt, not simply raw processing power.
Price reinforces these priorities. Indian gamers have shown growing willingness to spend 148 million users made in-game purchases in FY24, with eight million new paying players added during the year. Yet research on Indian gaming behaviour also identifies high costs as one reason players avoid paying for premium gaming experiences. For a first-time earner, paying more for additional peak performance makes sense only when the improvement is visible in everyday use.
Hardware makers therefore need to resist treating India as a market where a globally designed premium device can simply be offered at a converted rupee price. The product itself has to reflect the user.
That means deliberate choices: efficient processors instead of unnecessarily high power limits; larger batteries where weight permits; cooling designed for sustained workloads; ergonomic controls; durable components; sensible screen resolutions; and software that prioritises consistency over benchmark peaks.
None of this means Indian gamers do not care about performance. Competitive players notice latency, frame drops and responsiveness immediately. The distinction is that they care about usable performance.
The best gaming device is not necessarily the one producing the highest number on a specification sheet. It is the one that can maintain the experience when the battery is halfway empty, the room is warm and the player has been holding it for ninety minutes.
For India’s next generation of gaming hardware, comfort, endurance and thermal stability are not compromises made in pursuit of performance. They are part of what performance actually means.
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Media07-Sep-2026ARCKaustubh K. Jadhav
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