Hey Everyone, These transcripts are going to be really ugly. But we'll fix them when we're back in the office, later. ^^ So much gaming...so little time.

RAZER:

PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): HI Everyone! Welcome to the answer room!
<[Xfire-TTHS] Paddy (ragdollsuk) has left the room>
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): You're silent on purpose!
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): We have here with us Robert Krakoff, the President of Razer
<AOD# Max (southbunkermax) has left the room>
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): You've been asking your questions and now he can answer them!
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): First Question: As the President of Razer do you find it difficult to attend large conventions like Pax? Or do you enjoy being around the users?
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): I love being around the users. I made a concious decision 11 years ago, I wanted outside invasion. I wanted to touch and feel the user and be in their environment. I also wanted to give back to the community and not just take and take. Alot of companies are here for the money. For me, the money is great, but I want to give back to the users who support us
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Omer (omer200: Question : What kind of things will you make when virtual reality or a new "dimension" of gaming comes out.
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): It depends on what the game developers want. They pretty much dictate what the hardware will be by what they dream up. It depends on Artifical Intelligence or the power or the pc (or whatever the platform may be). and we'll adapt to what those are. It might be conceivably something that's affixed to your body, or even inserted into your skin. it might be attached from a display standpoint to your visual cortices and from a sound standpoint from your audio cortices. It all depends on what the needs are. In gamer interaction how is it developed/controlled/interfaced and it's highly possibly that Razer will be into that. Right now we're highly peripheral. We deal with traditional hardware projects. The first step might be case mods. But we don't rule anything out when it comes to change
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Sorry again everyone!
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Wireless failed for a minute there
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Lemonz (lemonscape): Question: Why is your gear so suprisingly cheap compared to some other brands which don't really put good features into their products?
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Well when we started out we were pretty expensive. The bloomslang was $100 mouse, and we sold $3000. Not because it was expensive, but because that's what it cost to make. Now we can make it cheaper. It's about supply in demand. Once you get large enough you can lower your prizes. You can be greedy and keep the prices high, but its our policy to give the savings back to our user. And we want everyone to be able to afford our products. We're selling it in other countries, not just the U.S. and Europe, who don't have the luxury to spend $100 on a mouse. It's important for us to be sensitive to the market. Part of it goes back that we talk to people on a daily basis, like coming to these events, even when there are only 25 people. 11 years ago, I put my e-mail address on the site, and I get 3-400 emails form people everyday saying what they like and don't like. And we have a constant di
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): 11 years ago, I put my e-mail address on the site, and I get 3-400 emails form people everyday saying what they like and don't like. And we have a constant dialogue. If you hear people say that the price is too high, you need to react to that. And there are alot of casual games
coming out where $40-50 on a mouse is pretty expensive, but for gamers it's cheap.
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): ShadowJ (sh4dowj): Question: It is nice to see companies support gamers using their products, was this the main plan behind the products or was the idea to support pro gaming a spuir of the moment?
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): it's been part of the plan for a long time. We look at the community as a holistic thing from small lan party to large like Dreamhack, and we look at leaks, tournaments, one of the original member of the World Cyber Games. We started out with individual sponsorships, fatalitys first sponsor, and it was driven by the game, because it was 1 v 1 at the time. Now it's teams. We try to keep it balanced. As many amateur team as pro teams as possible. We use alot of the teams and events like this (surveys, questionairres) to test new products and validate products in the beta/test mode stages. We utilize the whole community. Events like this are really valuable to us. I don't know if you saw people filling out questionairres, but those are really important to us. From genres, what men want, what women want; it's not always the same. We take the information and we make determinations on how to d
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): determinations on how to design and engineer our products, and even how to market the products. The community, for us, is invaluable. I don't think we could survive the way our company is set up with the community. Again. part of it is giving back to the community, as well as taking. But taking information and not money. I think it's a pretty good rapport that we have with the community that they trust us to tell us what they really believe, and we trust them because we spend millions of dollars and sometimes years to develop a new product. We have a product coming out that we're launching in January at CES and it took two years to create. It did not validate the first time, and we stopped and restarted it. That typical of how important the community is to us.
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Okay! We're back!
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): I'm not sure for how long!
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): But in the meantime Robert kept answering questions
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Here are they are:
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): GODJonez (godjonez): What do you think is the best thing about Razer products that make you be a step ahead of your competitors?
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): I think the outside innovation keeps us really fresh. And listening to the customer. I think the face that we were willing to be innovative. That is sometimes difficult to do. Typically companies will go to a show with OEM manufacturers and you'll go down the aisles and find hundreds of places that sell mice and keyboard, and you find one to fit what you think you need or what you think your customer wants, and you have them design one. But generally speaking that product is a copycat product. We take original technology. We listen to what the gamers say and we see if we can design it. More times than not we can, it's high risk because if you hit it right it's great, but if you miss it, you're way off target. It's high risk high reward but so far we've be fortunate with our products. Quite a few of our products will never make it to the marketplace, and you will never see them. And yo
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): And you'll never see them because we don't want to show you our failures. Typically we don't give up on a product that like, we reinvent and retool it. The tarantuala keyboard was 2 years in the making. Everytime we validated it, it wasn't what the gamers wanted, so we went back and started over again.
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): 'GazZa ? (gareth15): Question: Was this always your career path or did you want to do something else?
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Actually, i wanted to be a film editor. (laughs). I'm a bit beyond the film editing age now. But i've always been a gamer. I've been a gamer since the 70s, the atari 2600, colecovision. I always enjoyed gaming, I felt like if there was a way to live in gaming that woul dbe cool. Looking back it's still fun. Even though razer is fairly big company now with close to 300 people in the company, it's still fun. I still look forward to everyday and I still have great connection with the community, which keeps me going. I think that's the best part, being around games. I'm a little out of the gaming demo age wise, but they still accept me and I still love it. I still play online, but I don't really have alot of time to fine tune my game. I don't think my skills are where they should be. (laughs) Just chock that up to having to answer 400 emails a day. I don't have much time to game.
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Riobux (lostchances): Question: What do you feel is the biggest achievement and/or the hardest thing you had to over-come?
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): Raising money. it's the hardest thing for any start up. Raising money. Having to deal with small angel investors and venture capital companies everydayd for the first five years. That's the hardest part about the job, or at least the least enjoyable part of the job. Biggest challenge for any small company after that is getting the brand to be known by people. Awareness. This isn't like the old media days where you can run a bunch of television ads and people know who you are. Gamers don't watch tv. They get their news, entertainment, music, games (and porn) online and it's a hard target to reach. It takes a long time to reach them and it's a long time to become credible because they don't trust marketers and they don't trust "the man". They are extremely loyal once they trust your brand but that first stage of trust is the hardest for any company.
PAX CHAT LEADER (paxchats): they don't trust you and they don't believe your hype. You're better off not doing advertising. Advertising is hype. That's another reason why the community was so important. It put us face to face with the user on their level, not on ours and not on a level you don't respect.