Game Guru from India recently had time to chat with our big man, Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, for some insights on where Razer stands in the world of gaming and our venture into motion sensing gaming and peripherals. Below are excerpts from the interview:

GG: Can you elaborate on the collaboration with Sixense for motion sensing and gesture recognition controller technology for the PC? It brings to mind Sony’s Motion Controller for PS3, any comments?

RK: This technology marks the next step in user interface technologies for gaming on the PC. Razer and Sixense scientists and engineers along with select PC OEM partners are working on an ultra-precise one-to-one motion sensing hardware that uses electromagnetic fields to track precise movements along all six axes for use in current and future generation PC games. The absolute controller position is tracked to within a mere millimeter for positioning and to a degree for orientation.

GG: Will the new controller also have force feedback?

RK: Nothing is firm at this time, but the plans are yes it will.

GG: Will this technology be useful for things other than gaming? (like in the fields of medicine, defense, etc.)

RK: Gaming is our primary focus. Based on the way Razer approaches the hardware and finds methods to enhance tracking and latency, there should be no limitations for gaming or other applications. For Razer, we will be happy to make a successful gaming hardware since that is the business we know and love.

Head on to read the rest of the interview right over here.

Okay, so the world is going to the dogs in a hand basket, the economy is battered and beaten, people are losing their jobs, homes and personal wealth … so where does this leave the future of eSports?
In 2001 Razer pioneered eSports sponsorships by offering the first big cash award of $100,000 at CPL Summer Quake event. Back in 1999 we began contributing to local, online, live, LAN and other sponsorship programs.

Since then, other companies have come in and pushed eSports sponsorships to ludicrous amounts, many just trading cash for endorsements. Now the money has all but vanished as sponsors are running away from gamers as fast as their bottom line is evaporating. Stalwarts like the CPL, WSG and CGS have all been forced to pull the plug due to big ticket sponsors dropping out. This all started before the current recession and IMHO will only continue to hurt our community for some time to come.

Despite all of this doom and gloom, Razer continues to sponsor gamers in a low-key fashion, supporting gamers, the community, and validating hardware.

With the current financial crisis, many of the companies have, and will pull out of sponsorships. While Razer has also been affected by the economic downturn, we will continue to sponsor gamers and events as we believe in the mantra for gamers by gamers. While our sponsorship budgets have also been scaled back, we intend to continue sponsoring gamers and have no intentions of ever pulling out.
It is crucial for Razer to remember its roots and always support the community that made us successful.

We believe this retrenchment will be good for gaming in the long run, where the true sponsors will continue supporting gamers while those who were never really committed to the community have and will pull back.
And that eSports will actually flourish ultimately as ridiculous amounts of money with no possible return on investment from sponsorships were not sustainable in the first place and actually drove committed sponsors like Razer behind the scenes.

Lastly, the true committed pro-gamer will not have a problem finding a sponsor while the guys who were not committed to eSports and only in it for the money will also drop out.

Today is one of the happiest days of my Razer life because today is the day that we finally unveiled the Razer Mamba wireless gaming mouse. I don’t know how many of you are original, longtime Razer friends and fans but this is a dream that we began and actually announced roughly 8 years ago.

There are a number of reasons why we stuttered during the development of the Mamba and there is no way I can convince you that it takes 8 years to create a masterpiece. Over these many years of trial and error, we had a dream of creating the truly first wireless gaming mouse. Yes I know that there are a number of other wireless mice available but trust me when I tell you that they are not worthy of the title wireless gaming mice. If you don’t agree with this statement go to any BYOC, live gaming event, large LAN party, gaming center or arcade and see how many wireless mice are in use … freakin NONE!

From the beginning of its development we had four hard and fast rules that had to be perfected in order to make the Mamba a wireless gaming mouse. Overall it MUST perform exactly as a wired version of the best gaming mouse in the world. It had to limit latency to 1ms. It could not weigh more than a wired mouse. The battery life needed to be at least 9 hours or more (I’ll explain the more part later). And lastly signal conflict had to be mitigated as much as humanly possible.

I have searched our archives to find some original Mamba images and these date back to 2001. Back then all we made was the original Boomslang ball assembly mouse. If you recall that mouse gained critical acclaim as the first and original gaming mouse. We needed to follow up the success of the Boomslang with a wireless mouse and the gamers we interviewed at that time wanted a right-handed design.

After a year of research and development we began to run out of money. Since we had already announced the Mamba to our fans we came up with a less-than-genius plan to enlist our fan’s support and raise a little capital to “Save the Mamba”. Since this mouse was an endangered species in 2002 we printed Save the Mamba tee shirts and baseball caps and used the proceeds to keep the flame of creativity afire.

At that time (2002) technology limited us to a 2000 DPI, 900Hz mouse that weighted in at 180g with the batteries. I guess it was a good thing that we fumbled all those years as the 2009 version of the Mamba is 5600 DPI laser at 2.4GHz and weighs in at an amazing 129g even with the battery in place.
Again, and I repeat myself, with a firmware latency limited to 1 freakin millisecond!
I’m going to delve into much deeper information in this blog than my usual pithy approach because 1) you need to know what a huge achievement this is and 2) how truly excited I am regarding this mouse. So here is some of the official Mamba specs …

Mamba Specs
Wired Latency
•    1ms (Ultrapolling)

Wireless Latency
•    1ms (Ultrapolling)

Weight of Mamba
•    With Battery – 129g
•    Without Battery – 108g

Weight of MX 1000
•    169g

Weight of G7 in grams
•    With Battery – 134g
•    Without Battery – 115g

Time Required to Fully Charge Battery
•    Timing required for both Dock and USB is the same. Difference is in switch settings.
•    Mamba switch in ON position – 5 hours
•    Mamba switch in OFF position – 4 hours

Battery Life
•    Continuous Gaming Usage – 14 hours
•    Normal Gaming Usage – 72 hours

Default DPI Settings
•    5 Settings are available on the mouse by default – 800, 1200, 1800, 4000, 5600
1800DPI is the default setting
Earlier in this post I alluded to extended battery life and “more”. The more part relates to one of the coolest features of the Mamba. The mouse performs in dual-mode wireless and wired functionality. You will be able to switch quickly between the freedom of wireless into the frenzy of wired play with zero down time for charging. The USB cable can be easily and instantly switched from the charger unit directly into the mouse. It’s diabolically cool.

Mamba Q and A

Also in order to better to anticipate your many questions here is a beginning Q and A. Please write me back through this blog with any other questions and I will do my best to answer them and also update this Q and A so everyone else can read them.

Q.  How is it possible to have 1ms polling rate in wireless mode when the mouse supposedly communicates to the receiver at 1000hz and then the receiver communicates to the computer at a rate of 1000hz – theoretically this would degrade signal strength by 25% unless there is a repeater type function built into the receiver itself. While testing I have found the Mamba in wireless mode to be indeed around 750hz, not 1000hz. Please keep in mind my findings are based off of the windows drivers and I will test again when I have access to the proper drivers.

A.  Ultrapolling is a hardware level optimization. The mouse hardware, wireless transmission and reception and USB communications are tuned to send information from the mouse hardware to the PC at a 1000 times a second (A frequency of 1000Hz / a 1ms interval).
This is a hardware feature. It is active all the time. It is active whether or not data is sent by the mouse and received by the PC.

Software that measures polling frequency captures data received by the PC system. This software measurement is always lower than the hardware setting. It varies depending on the frequency of data sent by the mouse to the PC. It is not representative of the hardware setting.

Q.  Will the Mamba communicate with more than one receiver at a time?

A.  Our engineers have attempted to get a single Mamba mouse to work simultaneously with two charging docks. It has not been possible on our end.

If it was meant that two Mamba mice are able to be paired to a single Charging Dock, this is enabled for debugging purposes. It shall not be possible with customer hardware.

Q.  Does the Mamba have dynamic power scaling?

A.  No, the Mamba is tuned for gaming performance and all hardware equipment is provided with the required power at a constant rate.

The Mamba utilizes Power Management where it enters into a standby state after it remains idle for a few minutes. This is done to extend the time before a recharge is required.

Q.  Do we have the R&D preliminary studies with an in-depth performance analysis?

A.  What we can provide is a comparison of communication latency across the various wireless mouse technologies:

o    Bluetooth – 14ms
o    Generic 2.4Ghz – 8ms
o    Gaming Grade 2.4Ghz – 2ms
o    Razer Mamba – 1ms
Q.   Razer Mamba security features, what are they?

A.  The Razer Mamba utilizes a proprietary wireless protocol.
The pairing of Dock and Mouse utilizes a proprietary pairing protocol.
No encryption of the signal is made as this would affect performance.

Q.  What are the hardware DPI intervals to?

A.  800 DPI is the minimum gaming-grade DPI setting.
If lower DPI values are desired, they are able to be configured via the software drivers.

Q.  Are any of these claims for longer battery life in wireless mode than competitors valid?

A.  Our proprietary laser sensor gives more power with less power drawn

Increase in battery cells and quality

Firmware/Drivers/Software

The Razer Mamba’s Laser sensor is able to deliver gaming-grade performance while drawing less power.
It uses a high-grade, rechargeable Lithium-Ion Polymer battery.

The Razer Mamba was designed for gaming performance with an extended battery life. This is accomplished with optimized electronics and power management. The Mamba is a Razer gaming-grade mouse of the highest order. As responsiveness and accuracy are key to gaming performance, where and how you move the mouse is exactly how the cursor responds.

To wrap up this post I wanted to express my personal gratitude to our development and firmware teams who have worked hours, months and years on this amazing piece of engineering. This is truly quality product and the estimated MSRP of $129.99US reflects the craftsmanship and attention to detail that those of you who desire a wireless gaming mouse can expect. My best guess of retail availability is early April of this year.

So … the plot thickens again today as I receive yet another anonymous clue from what I presume from to be our crack development team (they may be on crack). As my spies and fellow Razer bloggers have surmised this is either a complete new computer system or a coffee maker. Since I do not drink coffee I will eliminate that possibility and more toward this next photo clue.

To me it looks like a very high tech hockey stick however the verbal clue (oh how they love to mess with our minds) but the word clue “necare” says otherwise. This word is either a new medical term or healthcare organization or it is possibly a disbanded disco band. Not much help guys! Especially when you add it to the previous verbal clues, Liber (not uber guys), II, Necare. I read this as possibly “freeing two rock bands”. Can someone offer another meaning to this conundrum?

Also if we associate the 3 images together what do we see? I don’t know, maybe it is a high-tech coffee maker. I have heard rumblings and rumors that we will actually find out what product this actually is at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 8th.

I can’t freakin’ wait!

Okay so this week I finally got through my email and spent time reading your comments and guesses regarding this new project. Several times a day I passed the development office doors but they were always locked with a sign posted “Secret sh*t, stay out Robert!”. I’m starting to take this personal.

Then today someone in that office (I think they are messing with my mind) emailed me this new picture and now it’s my turn to start guessing. I’m not saying that some of your interpretations and suppositions weren’t salient but after all I do have my own ideas.

What this looks like to me is the lighting on the bumper of the new Razer concept car. If that is the case I will be going to Washington soon requesting bailout money. Of course it could be something as simple as a new 4000 DPI electric toothbrush, but someone reminded me that gamers seldom brush. Could our evil genius dev team be working on a Razer Robot II … one to replace Razerguy (it blogs and answers email) and bring you coffee in the morning? 

Is it a Razer core product or something out of the ordinary? Some of you say it’s a mouse or a keyboard. Others speculate a monitor or a casemod. Perhaps it’s a console controller of some kind?

I’m not done yet so I’ll keep guessing and hopefully you’ll keep posting your thoughts. This is not over yet so stay tuned.