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Category: CES 2010
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Published: Monday, 11 January 2010 07:23
Razer was definitely one of the booths we we're excited for, hearing rumors of the first gaming console hardware from the company being displayed at CES. To our surprise, they not only had this but so much more, including a new type of interface none of us expected. The Onza, named after a predetory cat, is the a Razer controller for the Xbox 360. This controller comes equipped with adjustable tension on each of the joy sticks, allowing you to increase/decrease the resistance when moving the stick. Think of it like adjusting the DPI on you 360, how easy or hard it is to tranverse the pixels on your screen. Razer has also added an additional trigger button on both sides, which are programmable to any of the other button functions. For instance, if you find it difficult to run by pressing the analog stick down for long period of times, the third trigger button can be assigned this operation. This is acheived by using a switch on the back of the controller. The directional pad also saw upgrades, acting as four discreet buttons as opposed the Microsoft version, allowing more precision. This controller is marked for a third quarter release of 2010, with an MSRP of $49.99, and Razer has hopes to have this in physical retail shelves as well as online order.
The new Chimaera headset compliments the Onza, replacing the Microsoft version on the Xbox 360. These headphones feature 5.1 surround sound with semi-conductor and a 5.6 ghz signal broadcasting. The stand that it comes with not only gives the Chimaera a slick resting spot when not in use, but also recharge the headset via metal prongs the connect to transfer charge. This set is compatible with any controller and slated for a quarter three release, due at the same time as the Onza, with an MSRP of $129.99.
The most exciting concept, of course, was the new Sixense controller, which was only in development kit mode at the time of the demo. The Sixense is a dual wireless wand control system, using a receiving magnetic pillar and magnetic signals to produce motion control in the game. Yes, this sounds very familiar. However, rest assured that Razer has no intention of walking away from the core gamer market. That being said, this interface is extremely cool. The demo on hand was a modified version of Left 4 Dead 2, meaning first and foremost that Razer and Valve have partnered together. The third company to complete the triforce is Sixense, a company concentrated on gaming and more recently, of course, motion control. The Sixense system works very simply: a magnetic coil in the stand receives the magnetic signal from the wands, and mimics it in game. This system has 1mm of position and 1 degree of orientation accuracy. All the animations in L4D2 we're completely based on the user. As the demonstrater played through a small area withthe katana melee weapon, his exact movements we're copied in game. There are certain functions, such as jabbing to shove, tilting softly to the right to reload, and pulling up to jump. The charcater's movement is controlled from two analog sticks on either wand, and there are buttons used to do things such as 'use' and fire. At the time of demonstration, there was a lag of 40ms in the response time, but this is only a concept currently, and the response time is something Razer is working on.
Additional information on Sixense can be found at www.sixense.com.
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- Details
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Category: CES 2010
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Published: Monday, 11 January 2010 00:00
Robert Krakoff, on the new Sixense Control Interface:
"It’s very conceptional at this point because we don’t know exactly what we’re going to build. There’s an opportunity to do something at two feet and there’s an opportunity to do something at ten feet. And they both change the grounds of what you can build. My thought process is that whatever it is, it needs to be something familiar to the end user. There again you don’t have to put a cap on somebody with a bunch of sensors to enjoy it. Yet I don’t think it can be something as simple as a wand. So somewhere where people can get the most out of play and then I think our task is to do a couple things: is to prove that with our technologies that our skills our ability are out of the area of developing firmware and writing code, for us to be able to move in and help a little in the area of latency and then smoothing out movements because right now they’re at one degree and one millimeter of accuracy is, depending on the DPI, can be as much as 200 pixels. That isn’t bad when you’re shooting really slow zombies, but when you’re shooting something intelligent that’s going to be moving a lot faster I don’t think it’s going to work. So we need to fix that. But I think that what you’re looking at is, and maybe more over than one iteration of products. What you’re looking at is a glimpse into what the future is going to be for the PC. Are we close to tournament level? No. Will the first product be? I doubt it. But I’ve always been proven wrong before by our brilliant engineers and our uniquely brilliant firmware people.
So I think that what the little glimpse of the future could be sooner than what I think it is, but at this point we have no idea what the end product is going to be. So we have to decide, there’s a bunch of issues on how we reconfigure the elements woven into the controller in going into the base station. There’s a large coil in there, and it’s fairly big, can we miniaturize it, how small can it be and still be effective, battery life, all those elements have to be decided upon. We’d love to have a product out this year but we don’t know. We’re a little obsessive-compulsive about finishing off a product, making sure that everything works and everything that goes in the box is a promise, so that’s why our products are usually a little late. We won’t release something until we really have it done. Hopefully, what we do will be rewarded.
I don’t want anyone to believe that we’re walking away from the hardcore market at all. We have a load of new Razer products coming this year, but we’re pretty tight lipped because were watched very carefully by our competitors. We are, in the industry, kind of the standard for engineering we develop and that’s because we do it all internally, and our competitors’ do it all externally. They use OEM technology, we create our own technology. So it’s very different. This is the only time we’ve actually gone outside for this technology. We’ve been approached many times by other companies wanting to sell us 3-D software and we’re supposed to make product for them. But we’ve never been impressed by that. That’s a toy. This one’s got real legs to it. And the thing I like about it is that it supports any game ever made with the mouse and keyboard. So I can go back and play Descent and games I should’ve enjoyed more but I never found the right controller for. I can go back and play Duke Nukem 3D if I want. I can go back and play Half-Life 2 which would be really cool on this. So it will be like rediscovering some of your old games and replaying them. I like that. And if also you do the level editor, this is an incredible tool for level editor. Cut like 80% of, just whack it right off with the way this thing works. So there’s more to it than just this wand-type technology. It’s a very, very cool interface.
I think a lot of the guys who are bad mouthing it now just need to wait and see how good it’s going to be because it could wind up being very, very good. Personally, I think anything that has Valve and Razer can’t be too bad. We like working with them, we’re big fans. And these guys are pretty good, too. These guys from Sixense. They’re really focused on one technology and really focused on gaming, which is what we like. All of their employees are gamers, and almost all of ours are, except maybe a few accountants. We set up extra gaming facilities in every office, and we actually more-or-less require everybody to game for one to two hours a day. We don’t just make it available to them, even if they’re just playing Mahjong or something like that, it’s okay. Just gaming, get the feel of our products."
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Larry Flint and Gold Wheelchair
..the only other worksafe photo at the moment!
