MANILA - More international gaming tournaments are setting their sights on the Philippines due to the large number of gamers in the country, an online gaming consultant said Tuesday.

Villman Gaming consultant Mike Vinluan said the success of the Philippine leg of the World Cyber Games in the past couple of years has encouraged other groups to conduct regional tournaments here.

"With the success of the Ragnarok and World Cyber Games tournaments here, I hear the E-Sports World Cup and Code Five want to hold tournaments in the Philippines. These tournaments mean more chances for our gamers to win internationally. If they excel here, maybe they can also excel in computer games in other countries," Vinluan told abs-cbnNEWS.com. 

Vinluan is the general manager of ESports, which has been organizing the World Cyber Games tournaments on the Philippines in the past seven years.

In last year's World Cyber Games tournament, the Philippines ranked 39th in 78 countries that joined the competition. More than 90,000 people watched the WCG tournament daily at the SM Mall of Asia last November.

Among the games in the WCG competition are WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne, StarCraft: Brood War, Counter-Strike 1.6, Guitar Hero 3 and Virtua Fighter 5.

"Filipino gamers are becoming very competitive. The Philippines actually won a silver in the Guitar Hero 3 tournament of the Asian Cyber Games in Singapore," said Vinluan.

Vinluan said the increase in number of Internet cafes bodes well for the online gaming business in the country. "ICafes are booming and more and more are opening up everyday. For every Internet cafe that closes up, 10 more take its place. Those that close up are those in bad locations," he said.

He added that with over 8,000 iCafes in the country, the increase in competition has led to some Internet shops investing less on the quality of their gaming PCs.

Villman established its first online gaming branch in SM Megamall in 2008. The success of Villman's Intel Core 2 Quad iCafe inspired the company to open a second branch in SM North EDSA, which will have 40 Acer Aspire M7720 PCs based on the Intel Core i7 processor by end of August.

"We have been very impressed with the performance of the Intel Core 2 Quad PCs in our first branch in SM Megamall --- and so did our customers. In just a year, we became the preferred iCafe in the area and constantly tapped for gaming events and seminars. I am sure our investment on the Intel Core i7 PCs for this branch will be just as profitable and more importantly, I am certain the PC performance will exceed our customers' expectations," said Villman president and CEO Manuel Villaroman.