The Diamondback just reached its one-half year birthday and in those short 6 months we have sold over 200,000 units. To place that into perspective, it took us nearly 2 years to sell that many Boomslang mice in the old opti-mechanical mice days in the late 90’s. Certainly the gaming market has grown during that time and while there is no way of accurately measuring the size of the PC gaming market world wide (researchers still lump PC and console statistics), we are very happy with the results of the Diamondback.

This kind of support given to a relatively small and certainly maverick company like Razer indicates several wonderful trends. One, there are more gamers than ever entering the competitive gaming market and searching for products that can provide a true competitive edge. Two, gamers aren’t leaving the world of the PC for Consoles. Before the release of Half-Life2 and World of Warcraft there was clatter coming from the big PC publishers that sales were flat or worse. Some pub writers and editors dared to portend the demise of PC gaming in the near future. All you heard about was next-gen consoles, Halo 2 and such. This is very irritating to a PC hack like myself.

Now we can look back on those doomers and gloomers and thumb our collective noses at their crystal balls. PC gaming is here to stay. Games are bigger and better than ever. PC technology continues to advance at lightening speed. Game developers face challenges every week keeping up and supporting the latest graphic, animation and audio technology. Hardware developers like Razer are running full bore to keep up with the skills of the players and the demands of new PC hardware.

In a customer category where reviews are the lifeblood of a products success (or failure) we are proud to claim that the Diamondback is the most highly awarded gaming mouse ever. This is no easy accomplishment since Razer does not run one nickel of paid advertising at any publication or electronic review site; therefore we are ONLY judged on the merits of the product and its performance. Now I must say that no editor will admit that there is a connection between advertising and editorial and in most cases there isn’t. But like any industry there are failures in the structure and some writers continue to gush over many of our competitors products when EVERYONE knows those products were never designed for gaming.

Not sour grapes at all from where I sit. As long as our reviews are purely written and evaluated on merit and performance, what do we care about what we can’t control? We are just happy to have our loyal fan base and the opportunity to expose you all to our products through what is essentially a near perfect system of getting information out in a honest and fair media. Why believe our hype or any company “selling” its wares? Why believe the hype of any company selling and marketing products to gamers when there are hundreds of viable “watch dog” press, both electronic and print, available to you.

Razer likes and supports the product review system. Gamers are fortunate that so many of these writers and editors are also gamers and that you can have such a large choice of reviews to wade through. Comments and information on forums get blown out of proportion. These often turn into bitch sessions and create a veil of doubt over issues like sticky buttons or driver crashes. The truth is that optical mice have very few moving parts and our rates of returns are below 1%. Reading the forums might make one think that every product you buy might be flawed in some way. This is certainly not the case — not even close. In fact, we send mice from the same production run to the press as we do to the general public. If large or significant problems in workmanship or drivers were a problem they would be reported in the reviews and reflect in our score and numerous awards would be lost. Remember, we don’t pay for good reviews through fat advertising budgets; we earn them the hard way - through breakthrough technology and performance excellence.

We are extremely proud to have been awarded the GameSpot’s Best Gaming Hardware for 2004 Award, PC Gamer Editor’s Choice Award, Computer Gaming World Editors Choice Award, Avault Seal of Excellence, PceMag Enthusiast’ Choice Award and many many more.

So, like PC gaming, Razer is alive and well and here to stay! Oh, and BTW, many thanks to the 200,000 Diamondback owners for their support – you guys (and gals) are the best. Now I have to get back to WoW and gank some mobs with my lvl 51 hunter (someday I’ll write how Blizzard stole half my life with Diablo and the remainder with WoW).

Peace.