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With the launch of new devices and features, Razer is looking to make a bigger impact on the eSports and gaming community.
Razer (HKEX:1337) announced on Tuesday (January 8) that Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Alexa will become “compatible” with Razer devices through Razer Synapse 3 by the second quarter of 2019.
The company made the announcement at the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show where it launched multiple new devices targeting the gaming community. Razer said that users can control gaming hardware through their voices enabled via Razer Synapse 3, an Internet of Things platform.
Amongst the features and services of Alexa’s integration that gamers can take advantage includes Razer Chroma, a proprietary RGB lighting technology system that is synced with Razer branded mice, keyboard and other hardware.
The company also said that users can control ambient Philips (AMS:PHIA) Hue lighting through their Alexa enabled Synapse 3 platform.
Further, Razer announced that the Razer Chroma Connected Devices Program, which was launched in June 2018, is now enabled with 15 new partners and over 300 devices.
“Razer Chroma is an incredibly powerful gaming feature, and we’re motivated to work closely with Amazon to build this integration with Alexa, enabling users to change lighting effects, profiles, start games, change settings and more,” Min-Liang Tan, CEO of Razer, said in a release.
While the company aims to enable the Alexa integration within the second quarter of 2019 in Canada and the US, Razer is planning to activate the service in other countries by end of 2019.
“With Alexa, users can control compatible Razer peripherals while taking full advantage of other Alexa capabilities, including the ability to manage smart devices, access tens of thousands of skills and more,” Pete Thompson, VP of Alexa Service, said in the release.
The company is also making a bigger splash into the immersive gaming experience as it launched Razer HyperSense on Tuesday.
Razer HyperSense is an ecosystem of interconnected haptic-powered gaming devices designed to provide gamers with tactile feedback and allows them to feel the explosions, approaching enemies and incoming attacks.
Prior to Tuesday’s announcements, on Sunday (January 6), Razer unveiled a new 15-inch gaming laptop featuring Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) new GeForce RTX graphics cards which are set to deliver high framerates and quick renders.
“Gamers demand the best performance when it comes to PC graphics, and the NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 20 Series GPUs fuse the performance of next generation shaders with real-time ray tracing and AI, blurring the line between movies and gaming, with cinematic-quality rendering,” Kaustubh Sanghani, general manager at Nvidia, said in Sunday’s release.
The 15-inch reboot of the 2018 model features matching specifications as to its 2018 counterpart apart from the RTX graphics card which the laptop can be configured with upto RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics.
“Fluid, lifelike visuals are displayed on the expansive 15.6-inch Full HD panel with refresh rates of 144Hz, and the compact Max-Q design makes the laptop perfect for gamers on-the-go,” Tan said.
Razer also launched a 27-inch gaming monitor with an eSports ready display featuring fast response rate and high-dynamic-range support. The monitor which is set for a release “later” in 2019 features AMD Radeon FreeSync adaptive sync technology with a response time featuring 1 ms Motion Blur reduction.
“Razer has worked alongside partners in the past to bring the Razer experience to monitors, but the full potential was never fully realized,” Tan said in the release. “We have decided to tackle this space on our own and are very excited to expand our presence to include desktop displays.”
Razer has been big on eSports with it announcing in November that it is the official eSports partner of 30th Southeast Asian Games, where eSports is recognised as a medal sport for the first time.
Following the announcements, shares of Razer were down 0.9 percent and closed the trading session on Wednesday (January 9) at HK$1.07. Razer has a “Sell” ranking on TradingView with 16 verticals against, 10 in neutral and two in favor.
Image courtesy of Razer.
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Securities Disclosure: I, Bala Yogesh, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.