By now you have probably read up and fed up with reports, news and live updates from E3 … so I decided to bring you a dead report from E3 (huh?).

We’ll its over. I know that’s not really riveting news to you, but my vocal chords are certainly happier now. We must have spoken to every one of the 200,000 plus attendees at the expo this year.

This year we had a significant presence on the floor with a nice size booth. It was well decked out in Razer green and black and we featured the new Plasma Diamondback on every system. We had one of our sponsored teams, Girlz of Destruction taking on all comers in Quake 3, instead of parading out some booth babe who could care less about Razer and our products.

I mean everyone who was anyone came by our booth. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, Peewee Herman, The Pope and Attila the Hun (actually I’m kidding; the Pope was busy and couldn’t make E3).

One notable dignitary was my good friend and colleague, Ruben Mookerjee, Director of Marketing for all gaming at Logitech. After some gentle coaxing and some strong drugs I was able to get Ruben to pose for the picture herein. Which one of us looks like our mice will win GameSpot’s peripheral of the year award this year? I confided in Ruben that we were working on the new Razer 1036 mouse, which is twice as good as the 518 (that’s a joke to all of you who are lining up for the pre-order period).

Ruben is a great friend and a really good sport to take all my abuse (especially when you consider that he works for the evil empire). I always tell everyone that Logitech make the best home and office products in the worldJ

I can’t believe the press at some of these events. Some of the members of the press actually believe that the PC gaming market is declining. Naturally they attended the big Microsoft and Sony console press bashes and listened to their new console hype. Then they come out and interview me and say things like, “are you concerned with the decline in the PC market” or “how is Razer going to deal with demise of PC gaming”. I ask what planet are they from and have they been living under a rock for the last couple of years?

PC hardware sales are going though the roof. Half Life 2, and World of Warcraft
have brought millions of new PC gamers over the last 9 months. Games like S.TA.L.K.E.R, Battlefield II, Quake 4 and others are all highly anticipated PC titles that will once again drive more discriminating gamers toward the personal computer sector. Hey, there’s still no device better for action gaming than the mouse and keyboard. Until there is your PC is good as gold. Controllers are a sad substitute for most PC gaming peripherals. If you like to play sports and racing games they’re alright. If you are serious about FPS and RTS games then there is no substitute for the mouse/keyboard combo.

The challenge here is to get past the graphics and amazing specs of these new consoles and to understand the purity of PC gaming. In my mind console gaming is social … something you do with friends to relax. You sit back on your favorite pizza-stained sofa and play Madden football. PC gaming, on the other hand, is up close and personal. It’s mano y mano and you either get owned or you are the owner. If you want to argue this point I challenge you to play Doom 3 on a console and then follow it up on the PC version. It’s not the same game!

Anyway back to my recap of E3 (I think that’s what this blog is about); Razer fans were very excited to see and test the Plasma. The press wanted to know more about our new product plans (of course), and I’m certain you do too. We did show off the new keyboard by appointment only and we are sitting tight on releasing any specifications to anyone (my grandmother asked and I had to slap her). All I can say is that there are new products in the works and they will be ultra-cool and technologically advanced. If I told you more I would have to shoot me (this is my first violent blog in some time …).

What’s next for Razer is a trip to the next CPL World Tour stop in Sweden in June where we will have a booth. We haven’t been to Europe since last Game Conference, so please stop by and say hello. We will have lots of Razer swag to give away and you can test a Diamondback if you’d like. Some of our sponsored pro team players will be there to meet and it will be good to see many of our old friends again. Hey, maybe the Pope can make it since the event is in Europe … one can only hope.