VGTimes interview with an MSI representative at CES 2026: rising DDR prices, voice control, and competition with the Steam Deck

This is an interview by VGTimes editor-in-chief Rodion Ilin with Andy Chu from MSI — a continuation of the report on the visit to the company's exhibition area at CES 2026. Before reading, we recommend checking out the first part, where we looked at the updated Prestige lineup for business and productivity, as well as the second article dedicated to MSI’s new gaming laptops.

VGTimes: Please introduce yourself.

Andy Chu: This is Andy Chu from MSI HQ product marketing, and I’m the product marketing manager.

VGTimes: CES 2026 is taking place amid a global memory shortage and rising prices for DDR5, DDR4, and SSDs. How has this situation affected the development of MSI’s new laptop lineup?

Andy Chu: For the development of things, I think it’s okay, because we still have some modules that are exclusive for development. But if you’re talking about the effect on street pricing, unfortunately I cannot show you that right now, because basically the pricing of memory and storage changes on a daily basis.

So even though we know we’re quite close to the sales embargo of Intel Panther Lake, which is still in January, our sales team is still actively figuring out what kind of pricing we should deliver to channel partners and also to consumers. But I will say price increase is something that is inevitable.

VGTimes: So on a global level, this isn’t a major issue for MSI?

Andy Chu: Correct.

VGTimes: Let’s talk about AI technologies. Is MSI approaching AI in a truly progressive way? Do you see it as something that genuinely improves products, or is it more about creativity and experimentation?

Andy Chu: For AI things, we do two different kinds of strategy. The first strategy is basically we follow the vendor’s path. As you can see on Panther Lake, it features a strong NPU, right, and also significantly improved integrated graphics, which is beneficial for AI things.

So we basically follow their path and try to demo something like the AI-powered features on our new Prestige laptops.

For the other strategy, we also try to make those AI functions more approachable on the edge with our laptops. So we continuously work with NVIDIA to deploy similar modules to G-Assist into our AI robot concept that we showcased here, allowing people a more natural way to ask it to help optimize the laptop.

Basically, we follow vendors like Intel and NVIDIA, but we also develop AI that runs on the edge, which can bring true benefits to users without the hassle of the cloud.

VGTimes: Action Touchpad and MSI Nano Pen look like an attempt to rethink how users interact with laptops. But how actively do users actually adopt and use these features in everyday workflows?

Andy Chu: All of those exclusive features you see are being introduced for the first time here, so we haven’t reached actual sales yet. But according to our media tours and channel tours prior to the product announcement, the feedback has been really, really good.

Especially for the integrated storage of the stylus — it somehow solves that old problem where people always struggle with where to store their pen. And I think the Action Touchpad also got really great feedback from the consumer side, because people see that it’s huge, but they hope they can get more functionality out of it, and I think Action Touchpad is a clear path to make it more versatile.

VGTimes: Today, many developers — especially in China — are stepping away from physical controls in favor of voice-based interaction, whether in cars, tablets, or other devices. Do you see voice control as the future?

Andy Chu: I think it does make the user experience more intuitive, that’s for sure. That’s the reason why in our AI robot it also provides voice-to-text functions, allowing you to use your voice to access the AI robot.

But in reality, we see more and more people still tending to interact with laptops using a typical keyboard and mouse. So I would say we are taking a more stable path on this. We will keep trying to see if we can control more things with natural voice, but we also focus on improving the user experience of the keyboard and touchpad on our laptops.

VGTimes: MSI emphasizes that the redesign of its new gaming laptops was driven by user feedback. Which complaints or requests from gamers turned out to be the most decisive?

Andy Chu: I think we see that people still want great performance for sure, but they want less and less compromise, especially in terms of noise. That’s the reason why we adopted a triple-fan design on our Raider family. It has been proven that the third fan can reduce fan noise under full load.

We also optimized the fan curve on Raider, so it promises noise levels under 50 dB even during gaming. These are the things that drove our changes.

And we also see that people value connectivity and upgradability on gaming series laptops, even on thinner models. That’s why two USB-A, two USB-C ports, dual RAM slots, and dual storage slots are now the new bare minimum across MSI gaming laptops.

VGTimes: Looking ahead, what key technological challenges does MSI foresee in 2026 and 2027?

Andy Chu: I think the biggest challenge will be design-related. It’s the endless pursuit of more powerful laptops with less noise, which clearly conflicts with physics. That’s why we redesigned the whole Raider series.

Now it has a smaller motherboard, and thanks to that, we can allocate more space for larger fans, enabling higher peak performance and lower noise under regular use, like gaming. We will continue trying to find possibilities to combine these two contradictory goals in one product.

VGTimes: What advantages does MSI have in the handheld market compared to devices like the Steam Deck?

Andy Chu: I would say the strongest side of MSI handhelds is that we are open. We don’t lock ourselves to a single vendor. Right now, you can see platforms like AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme and also Intel-based solutions such as Lunar Lake.

Second, all of them promise long battery life, because they come with an 80 Wh battery. And they also promise precise control, because they feature Hall effect sensors for both joysticks and triggers. So openness, more precise control, and longer battery life are the main competitive edges of MSI handhelds.

VGTimes: Thank you for your time.

Andy Chu: Thank you.

Article by Rodion Ilin and Fazil Dzhyndzholiia.

VGTimes has been operating since 2011 and during this time has attended dozens of exhibitions and festivals where our journalists gathered numerous exclusive materials. For example, in 2019 we attended a closed Cyberpunk 2077 showing at gamescom, in 2017 we prepared a photo report from WG Fest, in 2020 we were at Central Asia's largest gaming event CAGS, and we also visited "IgroMir" several times, where we saw Hideo Kojima and other famous developers. Last year, we traveled to the land of the rising sun for TGS 2024, where we were amazed by the scale of the event. And this year we saw with our own eyes one of Asia's major gaming exhibitions — ChinaJoy in Shanghai and gamescom asia in Bangkok.