This Thursday, Razer CEO and Chief Gamer Min-Liang Tan will reveal a new product designed for "serious gamers" during an exclusive invite-only presentation at the Dolby Theater in San Francisco. It's the future of gaming, the company claims, hinting that it's thinner than a dime.
However, at just 1.35 mm thick at the most, the announcement would seemingly point towards a mouse pad, right? Nope. This will be a press event, so it's unlikely that Razer will reserve a theater just for a mere mouse mat. No, this is a dime-sized chip powering a larger form factor.
That said, there's speculation that the company plans to reveal a gaming product with a fourth-generation Haswell mobile processor, as the dime (symbolizing the Haswell chip) in a provided teaser video is shown to bump into a larger, darkened tablet or notebook-like form factor with a slightly rounded edge about 10 seconds into the clip. It's probably not an updated Blade gaming notebook or an updated Razer Edge, but rather the Switchblade design that Razer revealed back at CES 2011, finally becoming a real marketable product.
"The Razer Switchblade is a concept design (think of it like a concept car) and will not be made available for purchase – yet," the company currently states on the concept page. "Razer will be working with selected partners to design and launch products based off the Razer Switchblade concept design. We will be announcing more information shortly."
At the time of CES 2011, the specs included Windows 7, both Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, a dynamic tactile keyboard, a multi-touch screen, mini HDMI output, USB 3.0, and an Intel Atom SoC. The dimensions were 172 x 115 x 25 mm, and there was also an option of adding a gaming mouse.
"The team has been working in the design labs of Razer in stealth mode for the past 2 years focused on the Razer Switchblade concept design to bring it to life as well as working on other skunk works design projects for the company," Razer said in 2011.
"When you start up any game, the keyboard intelligently recognizes the game's specific interface and transposes the interactive visual elements such as command icons and control schemes right to the mechanical keys," the company added. "Depending on the situation in-game, the keyboard can also change on-the-fly to give you only the controls you need."
It's quite possible that the release of Intel's Haswell processors, in addition to the lowering costs of touch-based panels, are now allowing Razer to move forward with this project into the retail space. How this product will work alongside the Razer Edge and the Razer Blade notebook is unknown at this point, but we imagine the full picture will be revealed later this week… if it is indeed the Switchblade, that is.
