Gone are the days when cool new products launched first in the U.S. or Japan and then hit the global marketplace.
Yes, this time around U.S. and Japanese gamers will have to make do with watching the upcoming debut of Razer’s Oaktrail-powered Switchblade in China on YouTube.
As Nicole Scott of Netbook News notes, the sexy Switchblade will eventually make its way to U.S. shores, but not before Razer leverages its newly announced partnership with Tencent – China’s largest Internet service.
“If you haven’t heard of Tencent they’ve got the street cred of fifty cent (yes, I just went there) with an installed user base of 600 million. And, these just aren’t any users, they are gamers,” explained Scott.
“[So] Razer is going to focus optimization of the Switchblade for League of Legends, as well as Dungeon & Fighter, Crossfire and QQ Speed. Tencents says its daily active IM users number 2.3M, [so they] should find this platform handy to leverage QQ which is China’s most popular Internet messaging service.”
As noted above, Razer’s Switchblade is powered by Intel’s Oaktrail Z670 processor. The device measures 172 x 115 x 25mm, runs Windows 7 and boasts mini HDMI, USB 3.0 and headphone/mic ports.
