Razer Switchblade Mobile Gaming Concept PC

Portable gaming is not a new idea and one that Nintendo, Sony and to a lesser extent Sega have all found success with. Razer hopes to cash in on the mobile gaming market but in a different way, and is set to break the mould with a truly innovative product that it unveiled early for this year’s CES festivities.

Enter the Switchblade, a portable gaming concept PC measuring a minuscule 172mm x 115mm x 25mm and powered by Intel’s Atom processor. It features the Windows 7 OS, a 7 inch multi-touch display and comes with MINI HDMI and USB 3.0 support along with standard headphone and microphone connections. No word on the GPU though. Will this device perform local rendering, or would it use something like the OnLive service? Running Windows 7 it’ll probably be local rendering, but we’ll have to wait and see.

While the specifications so far are impressive for such a small package, the feature that sets it apart from the competition is the keyboard that changes dynamically based on the game being played and the current conditions of the game. This is a real keyboard with some kind of LCD backlight, so you get real keys to press, instead of just a touchscreen. This not only means that users are no longer stuck using an ineffective and inefficient button layout like most portable systems use, but each game will have its own predefined configuration, allowing the user to customize the keys to best fit their style. It’s worth pointing out that this is akin to the Optimus Maximus keyboard – which was a full sized keyboard with each key using a 48×48 OLED backlight.

Will we start to see a new era of gaming netbooks? Nobody knows but if more products are turned out like this, I certainly hope so. Just don’t expect to see one for sale at your local electronics store any time soon, as this is unfortunately just a concept.