Razer Switchblade to slice up handheld market

Mike Bantick
Monday, 10 January 2011 15:07

Opinion and Analysis

Razer, prolific producer of gaming peripherals has turned its hardware eye to the handheld gaming market.  At CES this past week the company announced the Switchblade, an Intel Atom powered, full keyboard gaming machine on the go.  Will this be perfect for WoW on the go?

Amongst the electric cars, 3D TV's and gamut of Android powered tablets produced at CES 2011 (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas was this new swish device from Razer.

Details are sketchy at the moment but the new device, codenamed 'Razer Switchblade' is powered by the new Intel Atom processor and sports a seven-inch multitouch screen and full QWERTY keyboard.  

As you can see in these shots however, the dynamic tactile keyboard is quite clever, utilising an intelligent user interface that adjusts the configuration and key layout on-the-fly based on game content and user requirements.

Razer say the Switchblade concept was created from the ground up by Razer designers and engineers, focusing on enhancing the entire user experience of playing the extensive PC game library on a handheld device.

So it seems Razer are not aiming to slice up any of the hand-held gaming market currently dominated by Nintendo with the DS and to a lesser extent, Sony with the PSP.  Instead the Switchblade is aiming for a PC-on-the-go experience, for those that actually cannot be without their World of Warcraft, StarCraft or Shogun: Total War fix even when riding public transport.

'The main problem with mobile PC gaming so far is that no one has been able to port the full mouse and keyboard experience onto a small size portable solution,' said Min-Liang Tan, CEO and Creative Director, Razer. 'By combining adaptive on-the-fly controls and display, we managed to maintain the full tactile keyboard in a miniature computer while saving valuable screen estate.'

 

More pics and info CONTINUED on PAGE 2