Razer Inc.

Razer Inc. (stylized as RΛZΞR), is a global video game hardware manufacturing company established in 2005 by Singaporean businessman Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff, after obtaining a large investment from Li Ka-shing, Hong's tycoon Kong, and Temasek Holdings of Singapore. The company has double headquarters in Singapore and San Francisco, California, and is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since November 2017.

According to Razer's Information Brochure, Razer has "built the largest global ecosystem of hardware, software and service games."

Razer is considered one of the pioneers of electronic sports, as well as one of the most important brands of electronic sports today. Its founder, Min-Liang Tan has been credited as the brain behind Razer, directing and overseeing the design and development of all its products.

History

In 1998 a team of engineers and marketing specialists Razer started to develop a niche for advanced computer mice. They introduced the Boomslang mouse. This was an early 1000 dots per inch mouse. Dots per inch (dpi) is a measure of the sensitivity of the mouse when following movements, with a dpi of 200 and 400 being normal around that time.

Razer was founded in 1998 by a team of vendors and engineers to develop and market a high-end gaming mouse, the "Boomslang", aimed at PC players.

At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, the Razer Switchblade, a prototype portable gaming device, was unveiled.

At CES 2013, Razer presented its Razer Edge gaming tablet PC, which was previously known as Fiona Project. The tablet uses the Windows 8 operating system and is designed primarily for games.

In May 2013, unveiled the Blade Razer 17 - inch Razer Blade Pro, laptops for games with fourth generation Intel processors Maxwell. The 14-inch Razer Blade was called "the world's thinnest gamer computer" weighing only 4.1 pounds. While the 17-inch Razer Blade Pro screen featured the integrated "Switchblade" LCD.

At CES 2014, Razer Project Christine, a modular gaming PC, was released. Each of the branches on the PC is a component of a discrete CPU, a GPU, a hard drive, memory, which simply connects to the central spine. Once in the slot, Project Christine automatically synchronizes the newly added module via PCI-Express (the same serial bus as discrete graphics cards and other components that are currently used).

In July 2015, Razer announced that he was buying the software division of the video game company Ouya.

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2016, Razer has been selected for the People's Choice Winner by the Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook. He won last year for the Razer Forge TV, and this year, he takes home the prize for the Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook, a super thin gaming laptop.

In October 2016, Razer bought THX according to CEO Ahmad Ty-Taylor.

Razer sponsored professional gamers. This sponsorship supported the emerging e-sports in their growth. Johnathan Wendel was one of the first gamers to receive sponsorship and is still active as a professional gamer.

Although Razer has lost market share to other manufacturers, it is a major player in the market for demanding gamers. Razer works together with Microsoft on the development of mice, such as the Microsoft Habu.

Comeback

In 2004, when the highest resolution available for optical mice was 800 dpi, Razer made a comeback with an optical 1000 dpi mouse named Viper. An optical 1600 dpi mouse, the Diamondback, followed. With this it established a formula from naming their mice to poisonous snakes and other animals. The Diamondback received the hardware accessory prize of the year from computer game website GameSpot in 2004. An update of the Diamondback, which uses more sensitive buttons and emits a blue glow, was introduced as the Diamond Plasma Limited Edition.

In 2009, Razer launched the Razer Mamba. This mouse is wireless and has a resolution of 5600 dpi. In 2014, the Razer Naga 2014 came out, with a resolution of 8200 dpi.

Products

Razer products are generally aimed at players. Razer products include laptops, gaming tablets and PC peripherals, including mice, audio devices, keyboards, mouse pads and game-pads. Razer has also launched a VoIP software called Razer Comms. The Razer DeathAdder gaming mouse is the company's most popular product in sales figures. Most Razer products have names of predatory or poisonous animals, ranging from snakes (mice), insects (mouse pads), arachnids (keyboards) over sea creatures (audio) to felines (console peripherals), with Razer Blade and Razer Edge laptops are flattened object names.

Game equipment

• The series Razer Blade is a series of notebook PCs developed by Razer and includes Razer Blade Stealth 12.5 inches, the Blade Razer 14 inches, and Blade Pro Razer 17.3 inch.
• The base model of the Razer Blade Stealth has a touch screen with a resolution of 2,560x1,440 pixels, a Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory and 128GB of M.2 solid state storage, this can be updated to 3840 by 2160 with 512GB of solid state of storage M.2. Blade Stealth was announced along with the Razer Core.
• At DreamHack 2015, Razer and Lenovo announced a partnership to manufacture a shared brand gaming desk called the Lenovo Y900 Razer Edition gaming desktop.
• The Razer Edge (also known as Razer Edge Pro) is a gaming tablet developed by Razer specifically for games that runs on the Windows operating system.
• In late 2014, Razer launched its Chroma product series. All Chroma series products have customizable RGB lighting. The first element of the series was the Blackwidow Chroma. The Blackwidow Chroma is a keyboard that has some new features added to the original Blackwidow keyboard. After the release of the first Chroma product, Razer has continued to add products to the series, such as the Razer DeathAdder Chroma. They have also added their RGB lighting to another mouse that they recently launched called Razer Mamba and although it has RGB lightingRazer customizable, it doesn't have Chroma's name on it. A new version of the Razer Diamondback gaming mouse was also released and also features customizable RGB lighting.

Wearables

• The Razer Nabu is a smart band developed by Razer with features such as mobile app notifications, fitness tracking and more. It was first published in December 2014. In 2015, Razer launched a new version of Razer Razer Nabu Nabu called X.
• At the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, Razer launched the Nabu Watch, a dual-screen smartwatch: it integrates a backlit illuminated screen always, which takes care of some fairly standard features such as date and time, a second OLED screen, which is activated by raising the wrist. Requires Android 4.3 (or higher) device capable Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth 4.0+)
• Razer is part of the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) ecosystem with the OSVR Hacker Dev Kit, a virtual reality device and open source software that allows programming for any variety of VR technology.
• The first game controller released by Razer was the Razer Onza. It was released in late 2010, followed by Razer Sabertooth which was released in 2013. In 2015, the Razer Wildcat game controller was announced, available for pre-order and was in stores in October 2015.
• The Razer Core was announced at CES 2016 along with the Razer Blade Stealth. It was conceived as a way to extend the functionality of the Stealth Blade by adding 4 additional USB-3 Type A ports, as well as a gigabit ethernet port and the ability to connect a discrete graphics card to the Blade. This was done with a Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 type C that connects the core to the Stealth Blade. The 2016 Razer Blade also has support for the Razer Core.
• Razer has a partnership with NZXT and Lenovo to add the Razer brand to the cases of the NZXT computer, and Lenovo pre-built desktops.

Based on information about Engadget, Razer products have always been aimed at players.