Razer, the 'lifestyle brand for gamers' (don't ask), has announced it is further committing to AI with the first of three AI hubs opening up around the world. First it's Singapore, then Europe and the US.
Announced on August 4, Razer's Singapore-based AI hub is live, with the green-tinted tech company set to hire 150 AI engineering roles. Chief strategy officer of Razer, Li-Meng Lee, says, “Our goal is to empower game developers with the tools that deliver more immersive, intelligent, and efficient gaming experiences at scale.”
In the blog post announcing this update, it states that the games industry is projected to reach almost $400 billion in 2033 and 'AI gaming alone' is estimated to net $28 billion. To dig into what exactly is meant by 'AI gaming', the stats cited are from Market US, and account for 'Game Development and Design', 'Gameplay Optimisation' and 'other'.
If these stats prove to be accurate, AI-based gameplay design tools will account for over a third of the market, with optimisation taking up a little less and others taking up less than that.
Each hub will reportedly have main focuses. The Singapore hub will "serve as a cornerstone of Razer’s efforts to develop next-generation AI gaming technologies." It goes on to say this will strengthen its "position as an AI innovation hub for the region." Singapore is effectively a base of operations for AI development until the other two hubs come online.
The European hub will tackle WYVRN, "a comprehensive ecosystem for game development excellence." WYVRN is a group of Razer AI tools, Sensa HD haptics, Chrome RGB, and THX Spatial Audio. The AI tools specifically are the most interesting here.
On the gamer side, it will reportedly be used to give game guide advice to players, as well as giving language support, "Elite Esports Coaching", and hardware optimisations. I recently tested out Nvidia tools in ver 0.1 that promise similar things (though I wouldn't recommend it yet).
From context, it seems like this European development will be in the ecosystem around those tools, not those specific tools, as the Singapore hub is also working on Razer's AI implementation.
The US hub, like the European one, will reportedly "build on the foundation established in Singapore, focusing on regional innovation and talent development."
However, these AI tools aren't only intended for gamers. It has a QA Copilot function that can do bug detection and report generation for game devs to iron out bugs. I suspect this wouldn't entirely replace QA, as some bugs are less obvious to spot, but I do see the appeal of a tool like this catching more obvious problems en masse.
Given that Nvidia's gaming assistant has already launched and Microsoft's Copilot Gaming beta has already gone live, Razer does seem a little late to the party here. Setting up a hub and hiring 150 people is certainly not a bad way to start the catch-up process, but Meta has literally started housing data centers in tents to keep up with the competition, so it will need to do quite a lot to make up for lost time.
Of course, Razer isn't attempting to build LLMs like these tech giants, so it's not quite the same as OpenAI, but Nvidia does seem to be going in a similar direction with its AI, and will likely be fierce competition.
Razer's cited stats may project $28 billion in AI gaming by 2033, but even if these prove to be accurate, it has to hope Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, and a whole host of others haven't hoovered up all that revenue before Razer gets there.
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