Benchmark Your Eyesight: SteelSeries Announces Sentry Eye-tracking Peripheral

Peripheral vendors are constantly trying to sell us gaming gear that’s touted as the next-best-thing in improving our competitive abilities, but it seems none of them are interested in actually training us to become better gamers. SteelSeries, with its Sentry Eye Tracker, is looking to change that.

SteelSeries has teamed up with eye-tracking veteran Tobii Technology to help create the hardware for Sentry, while SteelSeries‘ itself created the software that will help gamers understand were they excel and how they can improve. First, the hardware portion, a bar, which can clip to the bottom of your monitor:

After using the Sentry, you’ll be able to make use of the software to look at heat maps, which will show you where you look at the screen most often. This could have varying uses, but mostly it could tell you that you’re not monitoring a certain section of the game enough, whereas you should in order to increase your competitive edge. SteelSeries has coined a term for this, called “fixations-per-minute”. The idea is that the lower your FPM, the quicker you are at handling tasks, and in effect, the higher your APM (actions-per-minute) will be.

Here’s where things get interesting: While you’ll have access to a number of stats based on your own behavior, SteelSeries has been working with professional gamers to show you exactly what their results look like, as well. The company hopes that by doing that, you’ll be able to easier understand how your handling of a game differs from the pros, and it could help you understand what needs to be done to become more like them.

Sentry is truly a unique product, and it quite obviously won’t have as much of a market reach as something like a keyboard or mouse. The product is pretty innovative though, so what I’m looking forward to seeing in the future is actual testimonials from regular users, to see if Sentry did in fact help them train better.

We’re not sure of pricing at the moment, nor a release date. To whet your appetite, though, you can head on over to the official product page.