Razer Kickstarter aims to raise $1m for LH Naga Trinity mouse

[HEXUS]

Four days in (26 to go) and it has only managed to raise $27,000 towards that goal.

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[shaithis]

A Razer kickstarter?

Seriously taking the.....

[EvilCycle]

Difficult to sell left handed mice, especially when a good proportion of us lefties were sat down in front of a pc, shown how to use one the right handed way and never looked back.

[LSG501]

I think this says why you don't see many left handed mice..
"with Razer looking for $990,000 for the project to be successfully funded. Today, with 26 days to go, the project has raised just $27,000, less than three per cent of its goal." Now I'm not saying the $1 million price tag is excessive because I don't know how many they intend to make but it does feel a little excessive imo.

Also feel they'd have had better luck getting funding if they hadn't picked a mouse that has a more 'common' layout instead of the one with 12 thumb buttons.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

$1 million for a mouse??

[Tunnah]

That's downright disgusting.

[azrael-]

That's downright disgusting.

Was just gonna say. Well, I would've used the word "distasteful", but still...

I'm sure Razer has enough cash to "develop" a version of the Naga for lefties all by itself. Asking for almost a million dollars in crowd funding ...I guess you're right, "disgusting" is the better term.

[big_hairy_rob]

So it's £19 for a mousemat??? £99 for the Mouse??????
Sounds like we've the whole industry just took a massive step in the wrong directly...

Pre-order for development, limited tech? Pah!

[jim]

That's downright disgusting.

Really?

To me it's just a useful get out clause going forwards.

People will go on about LH mice every now and again, and rather than offering a platitude in return they can say "well, we asked people if they were willing to put their money behind it, and the answer was no".

I'm really not convinced the market is there from what I've seen, but the few that want them will shout very loudly.

[outwar6010]

Razer of all companies shouldn't be doing a kickstarter

[Iota]

Difficult to sell left handed mice, especially when a good proportion of us lefties were sat down in front of a pc, shown how to use one the right handed way and never looked back.

Indeed, I've used my right hand for the mouse forever. Unless they start doing a keyboard with the layout opposite to what we're used too as well, I don't see the point in a left handed mouse.

[DDY]

I dunno.

There seems to be enough people these days willing to throw money at some face on the Internet solely to make them an arbitrary billionaire without getting anything in return.

Maybe Razer are on to something?

[philehidiot]

Well, that settles it. I'm no lefty but this is a violation of what Kickstarter is about and also an utterly atrocious sum of money. Most of the R&D has been done, they basically just need to CAD it, tool and order a run. That is not nearly a million quid's worth. They're trying to outsource the entire liability and capitalise if it's a success. Business is about gauging the market and taking risks and when you are already a profitable business with money to invest it is utterly wrong to ask other people to finance your risk whilst you keep the potential profits.

If you want to gauge the market, do some market research on forums and so on. It's free to do, wide-ranging and whilst you'll get a few loudmouths posting, a simple well placed poll will get you a fairly accurate idea. Then you aggregate the responses, account for the number of views of the post and you do some simple stats and you have your potential market.

Sorry Razer but after my utterly atrocious keyboard/software issues, lack of support and this attitude towards proper investing, I'll be skipping on your products in future. The best part about the keyboard I bought from you? The Cherry Blue switches that you didn't even make.

If you went on Dragon's den, offered them this and then revealed you had a massively successful business in the same industry but wanted them to finance your semi-risky endevour they'd send you out with a boot firmly lodged where the sun don't shine. Kickstarter is for people with good ideas who don't have the capital, not established businesses who don't want to take a risk.

[Hoonigan]

In my eyes, KickStarters are designed for companies with very little capital; it gives them the opportunity to develop ideas or products that may eventually end up on the market.

A company such as Razer, with around 1000 employees and plenty of money to go around, should not be asking the market to pledge $1,000,000 to develop a mouse!

Not happy about this.

[peterb]

Not happy about this.

Given the apparently slow take up, I guess you aren't the only one!

But then if it fails, it will be cited as "No demand"!

Maybe that's why the bar was set so high.

[Savas]

I was also thinking a Kickstarter from a massive company like Razer seems like a piss-take, but that's not the piss-take part. If you look at it, paying about £77, you get the mouse (I'm not considering the early bird offer). The right-handed version of this mouse currently costs £90 (cheapest I could find). For a left-handed mouse to be cheaper (if you needed a mouse pad as well) seems alright, but to ask for a total of a million dollars in pre-orders is the actual piss-take part. Did the right handed even sell that many units would be my questioning.

The fairest way is to get the total amount of units sold for the right-handed and ask for 10-15% amount of units. Right now they're asking for about 13k units to be pre-ordered if my maths is not wrong.

All this however has made me wonder if we should see more Kickstarter's for more things. Companies would be taking fewer risks and thus could be lowering their pricing more close to the cost of manufacturing and cutting out the middlemen like retailers. Unless my thinking is flawed and thus I am mistaken, in which case feel free to correct me.