Symantec Corp. has announced a new version of Norton AntiVirus software, specifically geared towards PC gamers.
The selling point for Norton AntiVirus 2009 Gaming Edition is that it will keep gamers protected while they are in the middle of a game. Symantec hyped the product’s “gamer mode,” which is designed to be light on system resources to ensure the software never compromises the gaming experience.
This, of course, makes me wonder why Symantec can’t offer less resource intensive security and system scans in all incarnations of Norton AntiVirus?
I use this antivirus software at home and notice a significant slowdown whenever I run a system scan. For Symantec to come out with this, PC gamers have obviously experienced this too.
If the company is actually admitting that they can make their security software less system intensive, I think this would be a welcome addition to the standard version of Norton. But my guess is that this is just probably a marketing gimmick.
In the software’s press release, Rowan Trollope, SVP of consumer products at Symantec, said that gamers are an extremely demanding audience that simply won’t tolerate anything on their system that detracts from gameplay. The Norton AntiVirus Gaming Edition, he said, keeps gamers protected while they are playing online and runs perfectly undetected in the background, without interruptions or pop-ups.