Razer has announced updated variants of the Black Widow keyboard, DeathAdder mouse, and Kraken 7.1 headset which utilise what they are calling the new Chroma feature. This is essentially a new customisable lighting pattern on the peripherals, but also includes an SDK that the company hopes will be used to integrate the changing colours into part of the gaming experience.
These three peripherals are only the start of the Chroma rollout, and will eventually see more from Razer’s lineup gaining the full spectrum of colours. Other details are unknown, although Razer claims that these devices will be capable of 16.8 million customisable colors and a range of effects through its cloud-based hardware configurator.
“Our new range of peripherals that feature Chroma customizable backlighting is another step towards full personal customization and to interconnect our gaming tech,” says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO. “Chroma represents more than just multicolor, it opens up limitless personalization options for gamers to play with and we even have a Chroma Software Developer Kit for game developers to integrate their games to provide even more customization in the future.”
The idea of customising peripheral lighting effects for a game is quite a novel one. While it probably won’t catch on with gamers who mostly play in well lit rooms, it might be an interesting way of providing additional atmosphere for games that rely on that sort of thing thematically.
The Chroma-enabled Razer peripherals will be available starting September 2014. While the SDK will be arriving in late 2014. Razer has a website for those who want more information.
