Norton AntiVirus 2009 gets new 'œGaming' edition

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 08:09

Opinion and Analysis

Rowan Trollope the senior vice president of Consumer Products at Symantec took aim and fired away, saying: “Gamers are an extremely demanding audience that simply won’t tolerate anything on their system that detracts from gameplay.

“Norton AntiVirus Gaming Edition keeps gamers protected online and runs perfectly undetected in the background, meaning no interruptions, no pop-ups, and with the same award winning zero-impact performance of our 2009 products.”

Then the current German and European Champion in Warcraft III, Daniel “XlorD” Spenst, couldn’t resist a tactical response, so he unpacked the rocket launcher and blasted that: “The user interface of Norton AntiVirus 2009 Gaming Edition is really optimized for us Gamers. Fully automatic switching into Gamer Mode provides us with a perfect balance between performance and security."

Symantec notes that Spenst won the German Championships (ESL Pro Series Season XII) and the European Championships (ESL ENC; European Nations Championship) in Warcraft III in 2008 and is a member of “Team ALTERNATE”.

Team ALTERNATE is the official professional gaming team of ALTERNATE Computerversand GmbH and is one of the most successful eSport teams in Europe, with more information available here. 

A humourous video of a gamer who was using the “wrong” anti-virus solution can be seen here, while a Norton blog entry on the new software is available here.

Symantec also alerts us that: “The independent testing organisation AV-Test.org conducted a major comparative test of 34 security suites.  AV-Test.org rated competitors in six categories: Overall Malware Detection, Adware/Spyware Detection, False Positives, Scan Speed, Proactive Detection, and Response Times to new threats, with more information here .

“In the Anti-Virus Comparatives Test No. 19, (PDF Link) Symantec was the only vendor to be awarded the top “green” rating in the three tested categories, representing the best combination of detection, false positives and performance.

“Independent 3rd party test lab, PassMark Software was commissioned to benchmark Symantec and top security software competitors’ performance impact on key metrics. Full report can be found online. (PDF Link)”.