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SteelSeries in attendance at the Intel Extreme Master World Championship in Poland last week
SteelSeries, the leading manufacturer of gaming peripherals and accessories, is pushing the envelope with some innovative products in eye-tracking recently. Just a week ago, SteelSeries announced a team-up with the eye-tracking experts at Tobii Technology during the 2014 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. For those of you who remember the introduction of the Wii console and it's camera system, technology like this can change the entire industry, from game design to console design.
SteelSeries has always been a product innovator, dating back to its start in 2001. The company actually entered the industry with mouse pads. One of the biggest problems when mouse products still used roller balls was that they would collect dust and gunk, causing the user to clean them out frequently in order to function properly. SteelSeries developed a glass mouse pad product for pro gamers that not only looked slick, but collected less dust, allowing the user to get more use time and better functionality.
From there, SteelSeries got into designing and manufacturing their own mouse, keyboard and headphone products. SteelSeries had outsourced the majority of its software development until 2011, when they started to put a heavy focus on the software component of their products. They decided to hire Jeff Mahlmeister, senior director of software, to start building out a team and bring this development in-house.
"The experience has been like working at a new startup company, but well-funded," said Mahlmeister. "Over the past couple of years, I interviewed a few hundred engineers, building a 15 person internal team from scratch, in combination with using a couple of consulting agencies on certain projects. At the end of the day we are a hardware company... that's where our money comes from, but the software is equally as important to make it that fantastic end product."
SteelSeries quickly became an international company. Its start was in Copenhagen, where several executives and European sales and marketing teams reside, but has since expanded to run software and firmware development (and North American sales and marketing) in Chicago, and manufacturing in Taipei. Each office runs with just 35 employees as a good-sized startup would. But given SteelSeries' international expansion, leading position in the marketplace amongst competitors Razer and Logitech, and exclusive partnerships with companies like Blizzard and Valve, it's pretty hard to call SteelSeries a startup anymore.
"Besides game-changing, cutting-edge technology like eye-tracking, we're putting a focus on the mobile gaming space," said Mahlmeister. "The mobile space is growing exponentially and we're designing products to enhance it. We were actually the first company to market (in the world) with a wireless controller for iOS, working with iOS 7 with Bluetooth technology."
SteelSeries will continue to be a designer and manufacturer of products for the pro gamer, but they are also taking a look at the more mid-level gaming audience. SteelSeries will launch the first gaming eye tracker based on Tobii's technology later this year. Until then, Mahlmeister said they will "continue to attack on all fronts, making the best products they can."
