← Decoder with Nilay Patel
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Razer CEO on AI in game dev, Grok, and anime waifus
01:04:36
Razer chief Min-Liang Tan on confronting the AI backlash in gaming.
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- [00:01]
Sarah
All right, time to discuss the book, ladies.
- [00:03]
T Mobile Customer
Honestly, Sarah, I didn't read it, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new Family Freedom offer.
- [00:09]
Sarah
That's not really the point of the club.
- [00:10]
T Mobile Customer
Well, I'm closing the book on AT&T and I am starting a new chapter with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.
- [00:21]
Sarah
Oh, plot twist.
- [00:25]
T Mobile Announcer
Introducing Family Freedom, our lowest cost. To switch our biggest family savings all on America's large 5G network, visit t mobile.com family freedom to start saving today.
- [00:41]
T Mobile Legal/Disclaimer Voice
Up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement. Example Apple iPhone 16128 gigs $829.99 Eligible trade in example iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact us.
- [01:02]
Neil C. Patel
Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil I. Patel, editor in chief.
- [01:05]
The Verge Host
Of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. We're back to start the year off with a very special live interview with Razer CEO Min Liang Tan, which we taped in front of a terrific audience at Brooklyn bowl in Vegas. At CES now, Razer is obviously best known for making mice and keyboards and gaming PCs, and its signature black and bright green with a smattering of RGB LEDs to set everything off. But the company always makes splashy announcements at ces, and this year was no different. And along with the hype, there was plenty of controversy this year at ces. Razer earned those splashy headlines and not a little controversy for something it calls Project Eva, an AI companion that has a physical presence in the real world. There's an anime hologram that sits in a jar on your desk. Ava is powered by, you guessed it, Elon Musk's Grok. There's a lot of choices bundled up in all of that, and Razer can't really fall back on the it's just a prototype defense because it's taking $20 reservations and entirely expects to ship this product, potentially even this year. So I spent a good chunk of time in this interview asking Min some very obvious questions to which I'm not sure I got very satisfying answers. I really wanted to know if Min and Razer have really thought through the implications of building AI companions after a string of stories this past detailing the mental health issues chatbots have caused for so many people. And of course I wanted to know why Min and Razer had chosen Grok, which is facing outrage around the world for allowing users to create deep faked pornographic images of real women and children. Min says they chose Grok for its conversational capabilities, but he was also not very convinced by the notion that products like this always end up being turned into creepy sexual objects. Despite an entire year of headlines about AI psychosis and people turning chatbots into romantic partners, that exchange really set the tone for the rest of this conversation with Mitt, which focused on why exactly he's pushing Razer so hard into AI when it does not seem at all clear that his core gamer demographic wants any of this. The gaming community at large has been absolutely rocked by the AI art debate that's ripped through the broader industry in the past 12 months with concerns over labor, copyright and even just experimental AI use in game development, putting some of the industry's most beloved studios into full blown crisis mode. And gamers themselves are fairly hostile towards AI, which you can see in the comments on Razer's own CESAI posts. So I asked Min about all that and how he would know if he'd made the right bet here in the face of all this pushback.
- [03:35]
Neil C. Patel
As you can tell, there is a.
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The Verge Host
Lot of back and forth here and this was a really good conversation. Min and I really dug into some of the biggest issues in tech and gaming themes that are going to be Central throughout 2026. And it's always great to do these kinds of episodes live in front of an audience. I think it's going to give you a lot to think about. Okay, Razer CEO Minling 10. Here we go.
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T Mobile Legal/Disclaimer Voice
Live from brooklyn bowl at ces in las vegas, it's decoder, presented by t mobile.
- [04:16]
Neil C. Patel
Thank you to our audience. We are live at Brooklyn bowl at ces. I'm very excited to be doing this in front of a live audience. You're going to hear them throughout the show because Min has no shortage of extremely controversial things to say.
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The Verge Host
We'll see.
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Min Liang Tan
We'll see.
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Neil C. Patel
I was promised extremely controversial things.
- [04:31]
Min Liang Tan
Oh, is that right?
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Neil C. Patel
I mean, that's what they told me. Let's get into it. You've a bunch of announcements here at ces. You've obviously been with Razer. You founded razer, you're over 20 years into it. The gaming industry is undergoing a lot of turmoil lately because of AI. You're making huge investments in AI. There's a hologram waifu we should talk about that you've reintroduced here at the show. I actually want to start with something very basic. I've been covering CS for about 20 years as well. Razer loves CES. You love CES every year we love it. There are huge suite of products announced, there are weird project and concepts. Why are you so invested in cs? Of all of the companies, I think Razer has the most consistent enthusiasm for this show.
- [05:15]
Min Liang Tan
In particular, it's odd. And we were just talking about it yesterday. It's over 20 years, right at this point of time. And I think we've been at CES maybe 15 years or so. And from the very early days at Razer, I remember pepcom Massive hall. We had a little table there talking about gaming products back then, I think we were probably one of the few, if not the only, gaming equipment provider. And it's really grown for us. I think what has happened is we have a huge online community, people very passionate about things that we come up with, what's the latest and greatest, and we've really grown this community and who have all been kind of invested with what we're going to be launching at ces. So it kind of started a couple of years ago and we said, okay, well, why don't we not just bring the stuff that we're going to launch, but some of the things that we've got cooking in the Razer Labs and stuff. And we brought it to ces. It brought has been a hit. And we said every year, why do we bring more of our concept products, some of which will come to market, some of which do not. And let's hear what the community thinks. So we're a company that for gamers, by gamers. We really like to hear what the community likes to say about our product. And it gives us an opportunity to present the stuff we've got, get the feedback, and then we go back and polish it a little bit.
- [06:35]
Neil C. Patel
Well, I'm curious. I mean, this is kind of a meta question about this show in particular has changed so much over the years. The idea of even having a big tech trade show has gone in and out of favor. If you look at where a lot of the action in Vegas this week is, it's actually in the ara, where the ad tech people are doing whatever weird stuff they're doing over there. I don't even know what's going on over there, man. It's goofy. This is about getting attention. You launch things at trade shows because the press and creators are here and you can get a lot of attention. Razer doesn't need help getting attention. Why still do it here?
- [07:11]
Min Liang Tan
Well, it's an opportunity I think for us also to catch up with our partners, friends, show a little bit of what we have been working on under the hood. But it's a bit of a tradition also of sorts. I think the community expects us to be here and I'd love to see more of these in person events right now, especially post the pandemic and what has happened from a gaming perspective. We've also lost a couple of big events in the year so it's a great way for us to kick off. It's a little early in the year for us though. We wish it would be maybe mid January or something like that but it's a bit of a tradition for us. I hope it continues, I hope it gets bigger along the way and it's, it's massive right now but it's good fun.
- [07:51]
Neil C. Patel
Do you think you think you're still getting the same amount of attention from this kind of thing as you would if you just had your own events?
- [07:58]
Min Liang Tan
I think. Well we have our own events pretty much but it's a, it's a good opportunity just to catch up with partners. I think that's been the real, you know, opportunity for us and it's also a good opportunity for us to kind of bring the rest of our audience along Right. From the gaming community which who may not necessarily be keen so much on all tech but they really want to see what's the latest and greatest in gaming tech and that's what we do.
- [08:21]
Neil C. Patel
So let me ask about the announcements here. There's an AI headset, Motoku.
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Min Liang Tan
Yes.
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Neil C. Patel
You've got AI PCs for software developers which is really interesting. I want to talk to you about that. And then there's the project Ava which is a spinning hologram.
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Min Liang Tan
Yes. We've got Madison also which is a project that we've brought across which showcases the latest and greatest in immersion technology. We've put it into a gaming chair. So that's, you know, I can't believe.
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Neil C. Patel
I forgot the chair.
- [08:48]
Min Liang Tan
Yeah, the chair. It's getting a lot of traction and. Yeah, and a whole lot more. And not just hardware but software. Yeah.
- [08:56]
Neil C. Patel
So how do you decide what is going to be a real product you're going to ship?
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Min Liang Tan
Mm.
- [08:59]
Neil C. Patel
The gaming. The AI PCs I think are real products. You're definitely gonna shift. That's just happening. And then here's the concept just to get attention and feedback. How do you make that kind of choice actually?
- [09:09]
Min Liang Tan
So we, we've got a labs team internally that which has the chartered pretty much, you know, look at things far out in terms of the industry, where we think the industry is going, and we can build toward that. In essence, the decision to greenlight a project to an actual product, it's really like, is this cool? Do we think it's going to do well? I mean, we kind of started with that, with the gaming mouse. Right. We very rarely sit down with finance people and say, oh, do we do projections and things like that? It's really a bit of off the seat, off our pants kind of thing. It's cool, we like it, it's going to be fun. We want it for ourselves. And I think the real kind of trigger there is do we want it for ourselves? And if we really want it for ourselves and we think it's cool, we'll bring it to market.
- [09:59]
Neil C. Patel
Every year there's always some project. Some of them come out, some of them don't come out. One year you announced a respirator that got you into a lot of trouble. You had to recall the product. How do you make the call of, okay, this project, it's out, it's successful, it's doing what we want it to do, we're going to keep investing. Versus this was a one off, it's not as good. What's the metric of success for you?
- [10:19]
Min Liang Tan
Well, scaling it, I think scaling it is definitely something that we would like to do. And sometimes we're really early. For example, I think over a decade ago, we built a complete gaming PC in a handheld. You know, for that matter, we brought it to market also at the same time. And today, you know, we've seen handhelds go out there and we haven't launched our handheld, for example, at this point of time.
- [10:40]
Neil C. Patel
Would you have one?
- [10:41]
Min Liang Tan
We might. We'll see. But not today.
- [10:46]
Neil C. Patel
You got claps for that already.
- [10:49]
Min Liang Tan
So I think for us, when we launch a product, we look at the attraction for it. Is this something that we want? Do we want to invest in the next generation? Do we want to provide that roadmap across to it? So we essentially work very closely with the community. I think we keep talking about for gamers, by gamers, but we really believe in that. And we've got really big fan base, very passionate. Everyone's got an opinion, we love hearing opinions. We've got social media, we chat with them often, so on and so forth, and that's what really guides us. And we really let the community guide what we build for the future. Yeah.
- [11:25]
Neil C. Patel
All right, so now I have to ask you about Project eva.
- [11:28]
Min Liang Tan
Sure.
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Neil C. Patel
Did you say to your team, I Won a holographic anime waifu on my desk. You're like, the metric is what do we want? Who was like, I want this. Sure.
- [11:38]
Min Liang Tan
So actually, yeah, somewhat. Well, it's not so much in the specific verbatim words of I want to animate waifu and things like that, but we did hack together a holographic projector to have a character there. And we had ideas like that in the past before, right. Where we've created holographic projectors for game companies back in the day to say, hey, look, is there a way that we can do a. A holographic representation of some of your latest characters and stuff like that. But with AI we were able now to be able to get that personality there, the conversational AI coming through. And I think the tipping point for us was really not just making great hardware and not just having great software, but now with great intelligence, I think coming out together with it. And it's that premise of being able to have a kind of a semi physical representation of an avatar. To me being able to chat as opposed to clicking a button or typing on something and having a little thing over there. It's really exciting imaginations for ourselves. It's cool. We've always had that, whether it's a game like a super AI in Halo, Cortana, for example. Right. So it's a little bit of sci fi, us growing up always wanting something cool like that and said, hey, you know, it's a great concept and I think community loves it.
- [13:00]
Neil C. Patel
Are you aware of the very common trope that actually building the super intelligence from the sci fi movies is not like you should not build the torment.
- [13:08]
Min Liang Tan
Nexus well for us, I think in this case it's more a. Well, I'm familiar with that of course, but just checking. Yeah, but I mean with the guardrails and that is also I think on a broader level level from an AI discussion and things like that. Trust and safety is one of the things that we do look at internally at the company, but specifically for Ava, it was just cool and it was just awesome to be able to have a product like that. And hopefully we will.
- [13:40]
Neil C. Patel
So is Ava going to come out? Because I think that my understanding or my reaction to this product changes based on whether it's actually coming out or if this is just a concept that people can react to. But you're taking preorders from it. It's like 20 bucks to pre order it.
- [13:55]
Min Liang Tan
Yes, we're taking reservations for it. At point of time it seems like.
- [13:58]
Neil C. Patel
It'S going to come out.
- [13:58]
Min Liang Tan
We plan to take it out, but we do want to get as much feedback to hear what are the concerns? Are there things that we can do better, what's cool, what are the characters that we'd like to get on? We'd also like to get the feedback from many of our game partners also at the same time to do really specific character models, so on and so forth. And then finally, I think on the trust and safety part, we also want to make sure that we take that into consideration. Are there things that we need to know? And we are working with our model partners also at the same time.
- [14:29]
Neil C. Patel
So the model partner with Ava is Grok.
- [14:31]
Min Liang Tan
Yes.
- [14:32]
Neil C. Patel
I would say that there's a pretty significant disconnect between saying you care about trust and safety and partnering with Grok, which is in the middle of a deep fake porn scandal. Like, as we speak, as we're sitting here, Grok is undressing people left and right. I'm confident that we will be undressed by the end of this podcast.
- [14:49]
Min Liang Tan
6,000.
- [14:50]
Neil C. Patel
6,000 people, as the audience is. That honestly seems low to me at the rate we're going.
- [14:55]
Min Liang Tan
But Grok has.
- [14:56]
Neil C. Patel
Can you care about trust and safety and partner with Grok?
- [14:58]
Min Liang Tan
Well, I think for Grok, you know, we pick Grok also because it's got the best conversational AI at this point of time. Right. For us, at least from a conversation personality side of things. And that's one of the things that we looked at from a tech perspective. Now, ultimately, however, we do see Ava as an open platform. Right. If somebody wants to be able to use a different model, it's one of the things that we're taking into consideration. And we are multimodal. Right. But I think from a perspective, from Avatar, from a conversational AI for ces, we feel that Grok has a really great conversational AI model at this point of time. So that's one reasons why we picked Grok.
- [15:37]
Neil C. Patel
Grok, also made by Elon Musk, who has his own anime waifu ideas. I would say there's something there that is, you know, not necessarily just trust and safety. The idea that you would have a pet on your desk that looks like a person that can talk to you, that is cat. That's a big. That's a big door to open for a lot of people. Are you worried about that at all?
- [15:57]
Min Liang Tan
Well, the door had been open since Tamagotchi. You know, I think there's a pretty.
- [16:02]
Neil C. Patel
Big step difference between a Tama. My daughter has a Tamagotchi. Never. Like, I'm worried that this thing is alive.
- [16:07]
Min Liang Tan
Right, right.
- [16:08]
Neil C. Patel
You know, the Tamagotchi has not driven anyone into psychosis.
- [16:11]
Min Liang Tan
Sure. But from a virtual perspective and as a gamer. Right. You know, we've interacted with NPCs and stuff like that. Of course NPCs are getting smarter with AI and I do hope they get smarter. It gets more engaging and I think we're early days yet. Now the question, I think where it's going to lead to is something that we need to discover. Right. And of course we need to discover in a responsible manner, you know, to figure out how do we do that, put the right guardrails in, what do we do in terms of the AI, in terms of this. And that's something that we're learning. So building great hardware, I think it's part of it. GROK is powering this for us at this point of time. And it's something that we feel from a conversational perspective. They do an incredible job at now, over and above. What else can we do to ensure that ultimately when we do launch the product, how do we make sure that it's going to do the right things and be able to kind of converse and be the great companion that we want it to be?
- [17:09]
Neil C. Patel
This is very much what I mean by I react to it differently when it's just a concept and it opens the door to these conversations versus you are going to sell this thing to people. And I think when you sell it to people, the responsibility skyrockets. We've all looked at what's happened with OpenAI models over the last year or so. People have fallen in love with them.
- [17:28]
Min Liang Tan
Sure.
- [17:29]
Neil C. Patel
Famously, my friend Kevin Roos was proposed to on the front page of the New York Times by ChatGPT or. No, that was Bing. People are having relationships with these products. They're being driven to very negative outcomes. Do you think that you have to do something else to make sure that doesn't happen with Ava, who will be represented in human like form on your desk? Like the opportunity to have a relationship is going to change from what I have been told from our reporters. Razor, people are saying we don't want this to be a companion in that way. But OpenAI said that about ChatGPT and yet here we are. So what have you learned from that already?
- [18:07]
Min Liang Tan
So we work closely with them, model providers. I think that's something that we work closely together with them in respect of that. We do talk to them often about what are the plans in the future in respect of this. But I think what is Clear is that this is early days yet. It is still new for us to discover. I'm sure that there will be concerns or issues that will come about. And evolving what's happening for technology is something that we do now. Maybe it's even a hardware lock that we need to put in. We don't know. Right. Or it's a more software guardrails that we have to put into place at this point of time. But I think what we are, and that's one of the reasons why we decided to put it as a concept first out there, get the feedback, ensure that. And we're not going to be able to think of everything, but we would like to be able to get as much thought, concern and care to put into the product before we actually launch it.
- [18:56]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah.
- [18:57]
Min Liang Tan
Which is why we have also intentionally, in a very intentional and deliberate manager say we don't know when we're going to launch this. We really do not. And I would suspect, you know, for us it will be a phased approach to a certain extent with dev kits out there first to be able to discover more, someone's going to be able to do more with it, perhaps to load up different models and to have it say things that we may not necessarily want it to say and we'll find out and then accordingly we'll just grow the product.
- [19:23]
Neil C. Patel
I understand all this, but you're taking the money, right? You're taking the pre orders. Why take the preorders if you don't think you're ready?
- [19:28]
Min Liang Tan
So what we've actually said that these are reservations. They're not pre orders per se. So ultimately when we do launch the product and it could be a long way out then by then, because the specs are, we have not disclosed the actual specs of the product and even for example, which character models or which even model it's going to be running at this point of time. So we're leaving the absolutely open. And of course at the end of the day, if somebody says, look, this isn't the product that I thought it was going to be, fine, cancel the reservation and we'll stay and remain open and see how the product evolves. At that point of time, are you.
- [20:04]
Neil C. Patel
Ready for a customer a few years from now falling in love with their hologram on your desk that you have provided?
- [20:10]
Min Liang Tan
I don't think that's how we would want to design the product.
- [20:13]
Neil C. Patel
It's going to happen. That's what happens. We don't know these tools.
- [20:19]
Min Liang Tan
I suppose we literally do not know. Right. You know, for example, And I use the example when I play a game and I'm really invested in the game, you know, I really enjoy it. And I feel this sense of loss or unhappiness. Well, I wouldn't call it unhappiness, loss. When I finish a game, it's a great game. I'm fully invested in a movie. I'm fully invested in a game. Is that how we see it? Perhaps. Right. We want to create product that people care about.
- [20:48]
The Verge Host
Yeah.
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Min Liang Tan
Right. Whether it's a gaming mouse, a laptop, one of our software platforms, we want people to care about it. I don't necessarily think that we want somebody to love, fall in love with one of our products and marry them. It might happen, you know, who knows? You know, it could.
- [21:02]
Neil C. Patel
There are other CEOs who come on the show. They're like, you should marry my AI. Like, straightforwardly say these things to me.
- [21:06]
Min Liang Tan
Okay.
- [21:07]
Neil C. Patel
All the time. Right. And then, like, the reality is some people are having their romantic lives rocked because, like, a cloud service got deprecated.
- [21:14]
Min Liang Tan
Sure.
- [21:15]
Neil C. Patel
And then, like, you're going to have to deal with that. Like, I'm just like, these are the. These are the questions that are coming for you once you put a character that people can have an emotional relationship.
- [21:23]
Min Liang Tan
Well, I would say that, you know, potentially that could happen, but that's definitely not something we plan to, or we'll build the product toward that. And I mean, we have, for example, people really passionate about Razer products. Right. Some of them have come to me and they've said, look, I'm so passionate about this product. It's part of my life. I'm going to tattoo the product on myself and things like that. We didn't plan to. To do that, but we did, however, plan to make the best possible product. We put incredible amounts of care and concern, I think, in terms of the design, and that's what we plan to do with Ava also at the same time, or Motoko or, you know, Madison, of the products that we bring to the market. Yeah.
- [22:02]
Neil C. Patel
One more question on this, and then I want to ask you the decoder questions and talk about the rest of your investment, which is pretty substantial. You said you're working with the model partners, and that is how you're thinking about trust and safety. Is Xai a good partner when it comes to trust and safety as it relates to Grok? Because I'm looking at the product they're shipping today, and I would say no.
- [22:19]
Min Liang Tan
Sure. So I think, and I speak broadly, I think for all the partners that we've got, I think, for the vast majority of all the models out there, I think there's, of course, a lot of focus in terms of intelligence, you know, really trying to get to that point. But, you know, trust and safety really is one of the things that pretty much all our partners really do care about, and that's one of the reasons why. And each model, I think, excels in different ways right at the same time. And I think for us, we really want to find the best possible model and ultimately in what shape or form we ship. At the end of the day, that's one of the things that we will take into consideration.
- [23:00]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah. Is Xai a good partner when it comes to trust and safety specifically?
- [23:06]
Min Liang Tan
I don't know if I can comment on that at this point of time because I don't have enough information. I think right now, I really don't. Right. My focus to date has been more in terms of what's the best conversational model that we've got. And they're great. They're fantastic.
- [23:19]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah. Again, I think I suspect we'll be undressed for the next 45 minutes. They've got one idea and they're good at it. We need to take a quick break.
- [23:30]
The Verge Host
We'll be right back.
- [23:40]
Sarah
All right, time to discuss the book, ladies.
- [23:42]
T Mobile Customer
Honestly, Sarah, I didn't read it, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new Family Freedom offer.
- [23:47]
Sarah
Eh, that's not really the point of the club.
- [23:49]
T Mobile Customer
Well, I'm closing the book on AT&T and I am starting a new chapter with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones. On the house.
- [24:00]
Sarah
Oh, plot twist.
- [24:02]
Min Liang Tan
Yeah.
- [24:02]
The Verge Host
Come on.
- [24:04]
T Mobile Announcer
Introducing Family Freedom, our lowest cost. To switch our biggest family savings all On America's largest 5G network, visit t mobile.com familyfreedom to start saving today.
- [24:20]
T Mobile Legal/Disclaimer Voice
Up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement. Example Apple iPhone 16, 128 gigs $829.99 eligible trade in. Example iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due. If you pay off early or cancel contact us.
- [24:43]
The Verge Host
We're back with Razer CEO Minh Liang Tan. I just spent time pressing Min about Project Eva, his company's new anime AI avatar. Why it's powered by Grok and what makes him so confident people won't want to form romantic relationships with it. Now I wanted to turn to the decoder questions and specifically the Big and risky decision a lot of gaming companies are making right now around generative AI.
- [25:06]
Neil C. Patel
Let me ask you the decoder questions. You've got a trick, you got to play the hits. Let me ask you the decoder questions because I think that's going to lead into some of the big investments you're making and the change that's coming to Razer as a company over the next few years. You're really invested in design. You're a product designer. That's some of your background. How is Razer structured? That lets you stay focused on design.
- [25:28]
Min Liang Tan
So I focus on product at the company. We've got a really pretty flat structure I think at Razer I've got about 40, 50 direct reports. We really work as a team and the entire company is really focused I think in terms of product first. You know that that has always been the mantra for the organization. But we've got a really great team, you know, very talented team members and everyone's kind of, we've worked together for a while, you know, the, the, we've got team members that have been there for the last 20 years together with us growing alongside. And I would say that the guiding North Star for us is just about the gamers. And we've been consistent in respect of that. Despite the fact that I think very early days gaming or gamers, it was not considered a big industry or demographic but we've been laser focused in terms of that. And as we've grown, even with the industry growing at this point of time, the opportunities for us to go like, hey, why don't you do productivity also at the same time, what do we go into this other area and stuff like that. We've just said look, we know what we're good at, we remain focused about it. We align the team members all the time and that's how we are structured.
- [26:36]
Neil C. Patel
How many people are at razor?
- [26:38]
Min Liang Tan
About 2,000.
- [26:39]
Neil C. Patel
And when I say structure I mean literally organize. Does everybody report to you? We're almost 2,000 people.
- [26:43]
Min Liang Tan
So we've got, you know, in the traditional structure we've got our operations, supply chain, we've got legal, so on and so forth. But we've got a pretty flat, I think management team structure and we don't have multiple layers. I think from that perspective and we consistently keep a very, you know, single minded focus to say that look, the product's always the most important. The customer in the case, in our case the gamer is always the most important for us. And pretty much, you know, we ask ourselves the question, right, if if there's no direct, you know, like direction or management mandate, when it comes down to this, just figure it out. Like what would the customer want, what would the gamer want? That's what we do.
- [27:21]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah. And you're primarily based in Singapore. I know you come back and forth a lot. Where's most of the company based?
- [27:27]
Min Liang Tan
Well, we're everywhere. Right. So a third of our businesses in the us, a third in Europe, a third in Asia at this point of time. So we've got team members spread out. We've got about close to 20 offices worldwide. We're dual headquartered in Irvine and in Singapore.
- [27:41]
Neil C. Patel
When I think about with the market of gamers, you know, we're here obviously United States, very obvious to focus on what this market wants. Gaming is growing in China at like higher rates. Right. You're adding more gamers in other places. When you say we're focused on the gamers, the gamers in different regions want different things. How do you make those decisions? How do you decide which needs are going to drive your roadmaps or your design ideas?
- [28:04]
Min Liang Tan
Exactly that. You know, the game is from the needs from every country or region that we've got. So we've got team members from design in each of the, the various regions. And we do focus on pretty much two kind of constituents. Right. The way that we see it, first of which would be the game developers. That's who we work with very closely with. And then on the other end of spectrum we've got the gamers. And what we do is that we focus on what do the gamers want, what the game developers want. And we see ourselves as the layer in between and we keep both as happy as we can.
- [28:34]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah. This brings me to the other coder question I ask everybody. How do you make decisions? Do you have a framework? Do you have an organized way of making decisions?
- [28:40]
Min Liang Tan
I think we are dictated by what we feel the customer wants. That's what dictates our decisions. At any point of time we talk to the gamers and when we say talk to the gamers, it could be directly through social media, it could be through our customer base, it could be through our sales and marketing team and things like that. And anecdotally we figure out is this what they want? And if this is something that they are keen or passionate about, we then take decisions to say, okay, cool. And we have a very quick, flexible and we're very nimble. I would say at Razer, where we try to do as little as possible but scale as fast as possible just for Our customer base.
- [29:21]
Neil C. Patel
So this is going to lead me to the big decision. Right. You have announced you're investing, I think, 600 million into AI over the next few years. You're going to hire 150 AI engineers. I think the gamers hate it. Like gamers, I think, are in open revolt against AI coming into their games, into their platforms. Certainly developers are very worried about what's going to happen to software development. We've seen game studios racked by AI. That's a pretty big disconnect even, I think, in the announcement of the CS tagline for Razer at cs, which is AI is the future of gaming.
- [29:54]
Min Liang Tan
Sure.
- [29:54]
Neil C. Patel
I looked at the Instagram comments. If you're listening to the gamers, you'd be like, well, we're done with this.
- [29:58]
Min Liang Tan
Sure.
- [30:00]
Neil C. Patel
How are you reconciling that gap?
- [30:01]
Min Liang Tan
So I would say that the question is, what are we unhappy with? Right. When I say we, I mean us as gamers. I think we're unhappy with Genai Slot. Right. Just to put it out there. Right. And that's something that I'm happy with. I'm unhappy with like any gamer, like when I play a game, I want to be engaged, I want to be immersed, I want to be able to be competitive. I don't want to be served, you know, character models with extra fingers and stuff like that, or, you know, shoddily written storylines, so on and so forth. I think for us, we're all aligned against Genai slop that is just churned out from a couple of prompts and stuff like that. What we aren't against, at least from my perspective, are tools that help augment or support and help game developers make great games. I think that's fundamentally what we are talking about at Razer. Right. So if we've got AI tools that can help game developers QA their games faster, better weed out the bugs, I think along the way we're all aligned that we would love that. Right. If we could get game developers to create, to have the opportunity to create better, to check through typos and things like that, to create better games. I think we all want that. So I think that's the way that we see it. So one of the things that we're building, for example, at Razer, is what we call a QA companion. So QA tends to be an expensive endeavor. The gamer doesn't see it at the end of the day, but you know, it can take up like 30, 40% of the cost or delay games for the longest, longest time now. So what we've done is that we've created a companion, a tool that works with the human QA tester to be able to automatically fill in forms to say, okay, if this is. I say form is a jury ticket. Right. This is a bug that is identified. There's a graphical bug, there's a performance bug. All that's logged very quickly, so it's sent to the developers at the same time. The developer then can go in and say, okay, this is how I go fix the bug, or these are suggestions of how I fix the bug. So the way that we see it is that AI is a tool to help game developers make better games. And then in this case, rather than it replaces the human creativity in this case. And that's something we, I personally feel very passionately about, that we want to figure out how do we use for the gaming industry to get AI to do things better. But in the broader scheme of things, I think that's what we have been focused on. But there are other reasons why I think gamers are unhappy with AI in the sense that. And I agree with them. I don't like slop either. Right. That's 1, 2. It's like, is it raising the cost of RAM? You know, it is also raising cost of RAM. I don't like that also at the same time, and back in the day, the GPUs versus crypto and things like that, same thing. Right. So I do think, however, that all gamers would love better games. More fun games, more engaging games. And, you know, if AI can help create that by doing better qa, I mean, I'm all for it.
- [33:11]
Neil C. Patel
I want to poke on that a little bit harder. But let me just ask you, is Razer feeling the RAM crunch and the GPU crunch like everybody else?
- [33:17]
Min Liang Tan
Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And because we make laptops and things like that. Yeah.
- [33:22]
Neil C. Patel
How badly has that affected you?
- [33:25]
Min Liang Tan
Pretty. I mean, we haven't announced the prices for the next round of laptops, for example, and this is something that concerns me. Right. Because the RAM prices are going up and we want to be able to make sure our laptops are remain, you know, affordable and being in the reach of gamers out there. So. But it has been moving. I mean, it is such a volatile situation at this point of time that it's hard for us to even figure out what's the pricing at this juncture. Yeah.
- [33:54]
Neil C. Patel
Do you think you'll be able to pick a number and be confident in that number by the time that laptops have to come out?
- [34:00]
Min Liang Tan
I don't know if I can pick a number right now as I speak with you and by the end of the podcast.
- [34:03]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah, that's bad.
- [34:05]
Min Liang Tan
It is bad. It is bad.
- [34:06]
Neil C. Patel
Right now, is the industry doing, you know, you have competitors in the PC industry like Apple and Microsoft and others. They can move their margins around. They have like services business and stuff that attach these laptops. Maybe they'll take a hit on the RAM because you're going to have to pay for icloud for the rest of your life or whatever it is you're going to do. You don't have that kind of secondary business. Is that more of a danger to you?
- [34:27]
Min Liang Tan
Well, we do have a secondary business of sorts. So hardware is a big part of our business. We have actually a services payments business that we do payments for a lot of the game companies out there. And that's one of the strategies that we've got to be able to try to make our products more available to everyone. So, you know, and that's the way that we kind of see it. We are an ecosystem of sorts. We do great hardware, I think, for game developers and the gamers out there, but we've got a software platform that we are able to bring across to all the gamers out there. And of course, with services business at the same time. But the RAM situation at the end of the day still is an evolving situation right now.
- [35:05]
Neil C. Patel
Do you think it will cap out? Do you think we'll have enough data center capacity and things will go back to normal?
- [35:10]
Min Liang Tan
I wish I knew. I really don't. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:12]
Neil C. Patel
Is there a point at which the price of RAM or the price of a marginal Nvidia GPU becomes too high for you to sustainably do laptops at your scale?
- [35:22]
Min Liang Tan
I would say I'm hoping that it doesn't come to that. Right. I think, in short, and we've seen this happen with the industry multiple times in the past before spikes in terms of pricing, what's great is that as long as manufacturing kicks in and we are able to kind of cap up, keep up, it's just economics. Right. At the end of the day, there is a spike in terms of pricing. We believe that at some point it will come down. What goes up must come down, and what goes down, you know, at some point goes up too. Yeah.
- [35:49]
Neil C. Patel
Let me come back to what you're saying about AI and development. AI is the future of gaming. You've announced products here. We've talked about, Ava, the headset with the cameras and the AI stuff in it. That's Consumer AI products. Right, Those are consumer products. And you're saying your bet is on AI helping developers make better games faster. There's a gap there, right? AI is the future of gaming is an all encompassing tagline. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. But it sounds like your bet is very specifically on sort of the more enterprise side of the house, helping developers do games better. Is that correct that it's much more narrow than what people are perceiving?
- [36:24]
Min Liang Tan
Well, I think the tagline is very broad, but it's easier to do a catchier tagline where it's a broad tagline as opposed to it's hardware we look at or software and stuff like that. But in short, for us, we run an ecosystem. We've got hardware, we've got software, we've got services. And starting with the hardware, I think we do see that AI is going to be part of the whole kind of a conversation in terms of hardware, where the way that we look at it would be things like whether it's AI companions or whether it's making smart headphones, like with Motoko. Right. We see all of this as augmenting what's happening today, not replacing it. So it's not a gen AI conversation that we've got, it's about how do we bring the smarts when we design product and bring additional value across to our users, for example, using our gaming headphones, all of a sudden we provide additional AI capabilities. Is that great? Absolutely. So that's one of the things that we're looking at from a hardware perspective now, from a software and a services perspective, as we work with the game developers and publishers, so on and so forth, we look at additional tools that can make their games better. We can work closely with them from a QA companion basis, for example. And then some of these core technologies as we provide for it can, can then make better games. Right. Over and above. So I believe that, you know, at some point it's not just games, but AI is just going to be so prevalent or ubiquitous that, you know, every single, whether every single vertical, health care, you know, gaming, entertainment, it's all going to have some elements of AI there and we are just, you know, just going along with it.
- [38:04]
Neil C. Patel
I've heard this pitch a lot, I have a lot of reactions to it, but I guess the simplest way of asking this question is, what have you seen that makes the bet worth it? Because I've evaluated a lot of these AI products. The Verge team has reviewed a ton of them. We have literally Just tried to do the things that Microsoft says you can do in the ads and the products don't work right. There's this massive gap between what everyone says is going to happen or should be happening and what is actually happening in the products. And to be cynic about it, for the sake of getting a laugh out of this audience, I will tell you, the products are best at convincing you that you should love them and doing crimes, and they're not so good at identifying what's on your screen and helping you get a task done. They're really good at that. In the domain of software development, I can see why you're pushing there with game developers. It's obvious that Claude Code is ushered in some kind of revolution, that Cursor is ushered in some kind of revolution. And you, in your vertical, you have something to offer there that's different. But in the broad sense, this belief that it's all just going to happen, I think is. Is come up against the reality of what the products can do today. So what have you seen that suggests we will overcome that gap that makes you so confident?
- [39:16]
Min Liang Tan
Well, you know, occasionally I go on podcasts where the guy is more concerned that somebody's going to fall in love with my product, you know, in the long run, you know, so, you know, and I think maybe there's something there. No, but you see, it's early days. Yeah. It could completely be the worst possible idea. It could completely go off the rails and become, you know, off the spectrum, where it's, it's just the most phenomenal product that somebody, you know, completely falls in love with the product, so on and so forth. Right. And I think the reality is going to be something, something in between right there. And that's, that's. And the way that we see it, it's probably closer to bringing more value to people. And that's what we want to be able to do. We want to be able to get to the point where AI is going to be helpful to our customers or users. And that's also one good example where at ces, I was just looking at some of the stats and they said, what's the biggest buzz at ces? And there was a lot of, like, Ava, Motoko and things like that. And for what it's worth, we've literally just put vision capabilities, audio capabilities on a headphone and combine it with AI. And, you know, for what it's worth, it's not a quantum leap from a hardware design perspective, but it's captured so much imagination at this Point of time, people are going, oh, wow, now I can bring AI on the go with me at any point of time. It's truly something revolutionary at this juncture. So the way that we see it, and maybe that's.
- [40:48]
Neil C. Patel
Can we just hit pause on that? What specifically do you think is revolutionary about having the AI and the cameras in the headphones with you all the time?
- [40:56]
Min Liang Tan
Well, I would say that first up, we are really looking at being able to have an unobtrusive universal form factor to enable AI smarts. We're not, I think with.
- [41:09]
Neil C. Patel
I think the whole industry is looking for this form factor, right? This is like when I hear about the platform shift, you suddenly have this massive input device paradigm shift, right? We're going from touchscreens or mice to voice and vision. I get that. No one has sorted out that form factor. So your bet is headphones.
- [41:26]
Min Liang Tan
Our bet is headphones in a sense that we don't necessarily have to retrain human beings as a whole with an entirely new form factor, because I don't have to change any behavior of sorts. Boom, tomorrow we can get you AI smarts immediately. And that, I think, is a promise. There's a disconnect today with the possibility of AI and what it could be. And that's where we see ourselves as designers having that responsibility or the opportunity, so to speak, to be able to design in such a way that we don't necessarily have to change the entire behavior. For what it's worth, in the very early days, it could be, for that matter, you know, maybe it's a mouse. It's just a mouse. You know, why. Why is a mouse so important that today we've brought it from a mouse all the way to a gaming mouse? And now the gaming mouse is the. Is a broader category than. Than productivity mice, right? Gaming mice right now dominate all of the mouse category at this point of time. And right now we can call it a smart headphone. And that's the way we see it. And we don't necessarily have to retrain everybody to say, oh, you've got to put on new glasses, you've got to be able to. To bear with the weight and things like that. So that is one of the things that we're doing with Motoko. And a lot of the work that we do is actually on the software side of things, right? How do we ensure that we get context, you know, faster? How do we ensure that we are able to do all of that? So it's both hardware software fusion and sensor fusion at the same Time that we are really focused in terms of bringing the experience over. And that's something that we believe is the reason why people go and, oh, I absolutely get it right now why I would want something like that.
- [43:10]
Neil C. Patel
So the model in the Mataku that I saw is ChatGPT.
- [43:13]
Min Liang Tan
It's ChatGPT.
- [43:14]
Neil C. Patel
Why'd you pick ChatGPT for the headphones and Grok for Ava?
- [43:17]
Min Liang Tan
So ChatGPT for the headphones was primarily more from the premise that we think it's a good assistant in terms of CV capabilities, identifying things, being able to give very quick feedback at the same time. But it could very well run Grokos at the same time. And the way that we are kind of presenting this is that whether it's for Ava or whether it's for Motoko or any of our other products, we are multimodal, you know, and that was one of the things that we wanted to be able to do that. And we believe that, you know, at some point of time, we see Gemini doing really well, we see Grok doing really, really well. We see GPT having advances in various aspects. And this race to intelligence is just great for all of us as consumers. Right? And when I mentioned that Grok is great conversational AI, I think they are the best for conversational AI at this point of time. ChatGPT is doing great, I think, in terms of it as an assistant for reasoning and things like that. And that's what we see ourselves. We see ourselves as owning the vertical from a gaming perspective, being able to work with all the best intelligence or the AI out there, and then bringing and designing a product or service designed and tailored for our users and within the gaming vertical.
- [44:30]
Neil C. Patel
So the vision is, I'm wearing the headphones, it's got cameras, it's got microphones, it's got speakers, and I'm walking through the airport, I'm just asking it, where's my gate? And it's telling me the answer from ChatGPT, or is it more, I'm sitting at my desk playing a game and it's helping me through the game.
- [44:43]
Min Liang Tan
All of the above. You can literally do that with Motoko at this point of time. So with Motoko.
- [44:47]
Neil C. Patel
But this is what I mean about the capability gap. I think if I walked through the airport and asked ChatGPT where my gate was, it would not get that right at this point in time. Like, there's a model capability gap there.
- [44:59]
Min Liang Tan
I believe that if Today you use ChatGPT and you're providing snapshots in some context of, let's say location. To a certain extent you could I would be messaging on my phone with ChatGPT for example, and it could give me the reasoning to be able to bring me there to a great extent. I'll give an example. I would literally use ChatGPT for a whole bunch of kind of day to day tasks and stuff like that. It's got great reasoning, it's able to do that. And now we are layering on vision capabilities and that's one we ingest another level of input over and above. We've got far few mics so audio capabilities also come to bear. So with all of this we're able to give a lot more information across to ChatGPT who does all the reasoning, I think for us. And that's where we see it coming through. So constantly the smart intelligence is part of how we see us designing AI hardware At this point of time.
- [46:07]
The Verge Host
We need to take another short break.
- [46:08]
Neil C. Patel
We'll be right back.
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Sarah
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- [47:22]
The Verge Host
We're back with Razer CEO Min Liang Tan discussing his company's major investments in AI and how that puts him on a direct collision course with the broader gaming community that is embroiled in fierce AI backlash.
- [47:36]
Neil C. Patel
It seems like you have a pretty big reliance on the models themselves, right? You're not obviously not training your own models. You want to be multimodal. You want to let people choose. Are you thinking of yourself more as being best at the hardware, the form factor, and having the best microphones and cameras and that will let people use the models more conveniently?
- [47:57]
Min Liang Tan
Well, you know, we are an ecosystem, I think for Gamers where it's not just, I think in terms of the hardware, but most of our work is actually done on the software side. Good example, for example, for the matter if say, and I use maybe CS as an example, right. If I've got Ava, when I wake up, it's giving me information like what's happening in the day and what's my day going to be today, so on and so forth. When I get out from my apartment and I go onto the street to the subway, et cetera, then I've got Motoko at the same time. But with persistent memory, it also will know exactly what has been happening in the home. So Ava's somewhat following me everywhere, right. In my day, I'm not going to fall in love with it yet. But in short, it's following my day. I'm going around, I'm looking at it, I'm asking for directions. When I get to the office, I could literally be still with Motoko, which is another form factor. So the way that we see it is that the intelligence is persistent and it follows you. The form factors are presented are hardware form factors. It's a little bit like how we've designed, you know, our product at this point of time, we have a singular software platform, you know, that we are able to give you a great gaming experience over and above. You could be using one of our mice, our keyboards, so on and so forth, a laptop. These are just representations, you know, at the end of the day. Yeah, and that's how we design it. And there are particular problems that we need to solve that the models don't provide for us, you know, context. So that's one of the things that, you know, our AI scientists do really well. We've got advanced rag, we've got context, we really focus on that. Persistent memory is something that we are very good at also at the same time. And these are fundamental problems that AI scientists need to solve. So these are the things that our team does. So we work with the best models out there and we also have the capabilities of creating physical representations and that's something that we've got a huge advantage at.
- [49:54]
Neil C. Patel
Isn't a lot of the value here just accrue back to these models? Even if you're building all the stuff above the models and around the models to make them work the way you want? It seems like, okay, my AVA is going to be chatgpt. No matter if I want that unified experience, I'm just kind of at the end of the day talking to an instantiation of ChatGPT all day long. Because I have GROK over here and chatgpt in the headphones, you can't unify that. So at the end of the day, it's all Gemini or whatever model I choose. So can you provide enough value to like charge a premium on top of the ChatGPT subscription?
- [50:26]
Min Liang Tan
So that's, I think, where our angle is. I think from a software perspective that we believe that we can bring enough value of persistence across to the user and progressively we will see even more users that will say, look, this is what I want to be able to go from one model to another, for example, or if I'm happy with just a single model and if I'm a techie and I'm happy to just go directly and play around with it, we provide that open platform. So being open is one of the things that we truly believe in.
- [50:56]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah, one of the things that, you know, we cover AI enough. The idea that the AI startups are just wrappers on OpenAI and then eventually OpenAI will just eat them as the models get more incapable. We've seen that play out already a little bit. You obviously have. Hardware Razor is a different business, but you can see that dynamic here, right, where the core model capability might start to get the memory you're talking about, where the core model capability might start to get the persistent personality across devices that you're talking about. OpenAI is making hardware. We are told there is a competition with the core provider that is coming in different dimensions. How are you thinking about that?
- [51:32]
Min Liang Tan
Well, I think the entire tech industry has always been wrappers, for that matter. Not necessarily from an AI perspective, but it's the question of when you build a wrapper, do you provide enough value from the wrapper that you build? Right. And that's the thing where it's also very hard for anyone to be all things to all people. And I don't think OpenAI wants to be all things to all people. I don't think GROK wants to be all things to all people. For us, we tend to be very focused on our vertical. We are not tempted to try to do something else different at any point of time. And our vertical is really for the gamers. And this is something we've got, you know, huge, like domain knowledge in terms of what the gamers want, you know, what the game developers want. We've got distribution, you know, We've got about 70,000 game developers using our SDK. We've got 150 million gamers on our software platform. We've got distribution, I think across to that which, you know, can the models go out there and try to build the distribution? Yes, but do they prefer to partner? And I think, you know, the answer is they do prefer to partner. And fundamentally we have a huge amount of data, I think, on the game is their preferences, what they want, what they like, that we can bring across to the models also at the same time, which is our IP for that matter. So I think with that in mind, as I say, having all these verticals, you may call it building wrappers of sorts, but these are very deep wrappers that we have to build. A lot of customization, a lot of building. And it's more than just hardware, right? It's not hardware. As I say, the hardware is just part of the equation. It's the software work that we need to do. It's the R and D work that we need to do for, for example, to get persistence in the space and context. So to get the context for our users. That's where our data comes in. Also at the same time, to be able to kind of pivot and focus on that.
- [53:20]
Neil C. Patel
I think one of the reasons people like companies like Razer and like dealing with products that Razer makes is there. You just buy them and you're done. Like, you can just buy the mouse and then you own it and it's fine, you can just buy the laptop. I'm not in an ongoing subscription relationship with you, unless I want to be sure. One of your competitors, Hanukki Faber from Logitech, came on the show a year or two ago and she's like, I want to build a forever mouse. And what she meant was a subscription mouse. And that was she's never coming back on the show again. I think based on the reaction to.
- [53:49]
Min Liang Tan
That.
- [53:51]
Neil C. Patel
That'S my understanding of how they felt about that interview. All the things you're talking about are ongoing relationships, ongoing development costs. I hear it, I hear the promise. I also hear I'm going to have to pay a fee every month. This is where that comes from. You need to pay the developers, you need to pay for cloud uptime to make the AI assistant alive. How much are you going to charge for all of that?
- [54:12]
Min Liang Tan
Well, we've always had an ongoing relationship with our customer. That's the thing. The way that we see it from Razer is that when somebody buys a Razer mouse, he tends to buy another Razer mouse in the future. He expands the, the devices that he owns from us. So we've always had a long term relationship with Our customer from that perspective at some point of time. I think as we think through the whole AI uptime, you know, so on and so forth. I mean we've had cloud costs also in the past, right? Maintaining profiles in cloud, so on and so forth. So for us, I think that's one of the things that we want to figure out. What can we do to ensure that we bring the value? And I think that's our obsession. If there is no value, our customers won't pay for it, we won't pay for it ourselves. To that end, that's our focus, I think, in respect of it. And it could be through we build it into the hardware cost for that matter, if that makes sense. I'll be candid. We have literally not thought through this in great detail, but the way that we see it is how do we identify that value to the user? And from there we are very clear. We message this, this is the value that we see out of this and we'll see how we let the market decide.
- [55:28]
Neil C. Patel
I look at that reaction from gamers broadly to AI in the industry. There's slop. I think there's a lot of reaction to slop. I think there's a lot of reaction to game studios being in whatever amount of crisis that game studios appear to be in, there's whatever reaction to consolidation and then there is the relentless fee seeking from the games industry, right, that everything is going to be a subscription, everything is going to be free to play with dlc, everything is going to be ongoing recurring cost over and over and over again. And the industry has really moved to that model across the board. And I think people are feeling that pain. So then they hear AI and they say, okay, someone else is going to ask me for 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month. Can you avoid that? Is that you can just price it into the hardware or is that going to be inevitable?
- [56:08]
Min Liang Tan
So as I've mentioned, I don't know if we're going to price it into the hardware. We are still figuring it out. But I would say that at the end of the day the question is how much value you're getting out of it, right? So I mean I, I pay for Spotify because I see the value in terms of paying for Spotify. I get a whole library of music and so on and so forth, Game Pass, you know, so on and so forth throughout. There's times of which I would prefer micro. I mean, I look back and go like, oh, I wish I could just pay one time for this title right there is microtransactions. There is subscription, subscription fees. But at the end of the day, I think myself as consumer, myself as a gamer, I would say, I would just look at anything and you know, I would say if it's worth that amount of money to me, I would pay for it. Otherwise, I'll vote with my wallet. Yeah, you know, that's.
- [56:54]
Neil C. Patel
Are you seeing signs that the AI stuff is going to be worth paying for that way? I mean, this is the bubble, right? Is that we're going to spend all this money Ford invest in all this infrastructure, we're going to skyrocket the price of RAM and GPUs. And then at the end of the day people are like, that's not actually worth the 20 bucks a month.
- [57:11]
Min Liang Tan
I don't necessarily see it as AI per se, but I see the kind of value that I get out of it. So for example, a ChatGPT subscription, right. Or a GRO subscription for that matter, I do see value out of it and that's why I pay for it. And that's the way I see. I don't see myself as paying for AI per se. I see it as, you know, what am I getting out of a chatbot, for example, that can advise me on travel matters, health matters, whatever it is my day to day and stuff like that. Is that worth 20 bucks to me, in the case you're a billionaire?
- [57:45]
Neil C. Patel
I just want to be right, sure. I'm just saying the marginal cost is meaningless to you.
- [57:51]
Min Liang Tan
20 bucks is still 20 bucks.
- [57:54]
Neil C. Patel
I'm just saying, I think for a lot of people that is meaningful, especially stacked on top of all the other money there. So basically, basically I'm saying, do you, do you see that critique of AI as a bubble, that the investment has not yet delivered the value that will make it so obvious that the investment is worth it.
- [58:10]
Min Liang Tan
So I see that. I mean, huge amount of investments are going to, we are investing into AI, I think as we speak. But I do see the potential, I think at this point of time, in many cases, you know, in terms of, I mean, look at the number of paid subscribers for ChatGPT, for example. So people do see the value in terms of whether it's a chatbot, AI, so on and so forth. And you know, I do think the reality, the potential is going to be realized now in many cases, I think there will be AI slot that we will go some. I mean, I've paid for subscriptions at the start where I thought it was going to be great, but I've canceled them for example. But I do believe that in many cases, and in some cases that we have not even envisaged yet, the potential will be realized. Yeah.
- [59:00]
Neil C. Patel
Let me ask you broadly. I mean, you obviously talk a lot to game developers. You and I backstage were just talking about the nature of art and the age of AI and the nature of craft. That industry is going through an enormous amount of turmoil right now. What do you think the outcome looks like? What do you think makes that all feel good at the end?
- [59:19]
Min Liang Tan
I would say that the outcome that we see, and I think it's going to be the likely outcome, is that AI tools are going to be helping human developers develop faster and better. And I think that's the natural outcome where we're talking about graduating, whether it's an analog kind of way of creating art versus digital. And I think it's going to be the same thing. We're going to see, you know, human artists use AI tools to kind of really bring their vision to life, you know, and we'll see new forms of artists, artists of whom may not necessarily have been so adept in terms of using a paintbrush or using Photoshop now being able to kind of wordsmith and craft great pieces of art with prompts, you know, throughout. So that's, I think, what's going to happen where we will see even more human creators now with the help of more tools. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I really, truly see that, that AI tools will come to fall because at some point in time we're going to see so much slop out there that we're going to crave for really great art, really great design. And that's what's going to happen. And we've seen that cycle go over and over and over again. So with the amount of slop out there, we're going to see some level of art rise to the top. And that kind of art may be created with the same tools that created the slop, but with great care, with great discernment to be able to do something truly different. And the difference will come from human ingenuity, not from countless prompt mashing, so to speak.
- [61:07]
Neil C. Patel
So I feel like I have to ask you this now. What games are you playing right now?
- [61:10]
Min Liang Tan
Oh, it depends, you know, what meets the bar. What meets the bar? You know, I play a lot of, you know, single player games at this point of time also like Civilization and stuff like that. I still do a lot of that. I do play some MMOs of sorts, you know, FPSs. I still played a Lot of the Battle Royale genre. So, you know, things like that.
- [61:37]
Neil C. Patel
You just name genres. What games are you playing that meet the bar?
- [61:40]
Min Liang Tan
That meet. Which bar?
- [61:41]
Neil C. Patel
The bar. You're talking about human ingenuity and creativity. What games are you playing right now that meet the bar?
- [61:47]
Min Liang Tan
Oh, well, I play random stuff, even like if you talk about human ingenuity and I even play some of the Roblox games at this point in time. Right. But a lot of the games, and maybe I talk broadly in terms of genres, but primarily because I appreciate the human ingenuity that's gone into the genres itself. Right. Hundred people dropped on an island with a circle that comes through that. That is what I mean. While I enjoy the. The game itself, I also appreciate the mechanic, the thought that has gone into and. And the premise that the designer has figured out in pubg, for example. Right. That it's this primal instinct of humans to be the last man standing, so to speak. So it's things like that that I appreciate and I think it's odd.
- [62:37]
Neil C. Patel
Okay, what's next for Razer? What should people be looking for?
- [62:43]
Min Liang Tan
More of the same, I would say, in the sense, when I say more of the same, I'd say nothing has changed from day one for us. And that has always been our mantra and we used to say it all the time that, you know, the mantra for us, our, for gamers, by gamers mantra has really followed us from day one, where the gaming industry didn't really exist as an industry, even the hardware industry or software and so on and so forth. We believe that we design products for ourselves that we enjoy, that I enjoy using at any point of time, and that tomorrow, when the game industry did grow dramatically, we were still focused on games, even though there were multiple opportunities for us to kind of expand out there. And even now where we talk about the gaming industry in somewhat of doldrums at this juncture, I believe that we're going to see the next great genre come through. Right. Whether it's MMOs in early days, MOBAs and then battle Royales, we're going to see the next great genre. We're going to see, you know, hopefully GTA 6 at some point of time. Right. So all that we look forward to, but we're just pretty much laser focused. It's just that the demographic has really changed. The word gamer has also changed through the years. The games have changed through the years. Right. And for us, we're just sitting here very focused, designing great product for ourselves.
- [64:04]
Neil C. Patel
Yeah, Minh, this has been great. Thank you so much for joining us in Dakota.
- [64:07]
Min Liang Tan
Thank you.
- [64:07]
Neil C. Patel
Thank you to this audience.
- [64:08]
Min Liang Tan
Thank you.
- [64:14]
Neil C. Patel
I'd like to thank Min for joining.
- [64:16]
The Verge Host
Me on Decoder site and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else, drop us a line. You can email us atdecoder the verge.com we really do read all the emails. You can also hit me up directly on threads or bluesky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes DecoderPod. We also have a TikTok and Instagram. They're DecoderPod too and they're a lot of fun.
- [64:34]
Neil C. Patel
If you like the coder, please share.
- [64:35]
The Verge Host
It with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Decoder is production on the Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
- [64:40]
Neil C. Patel
The show is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Staat.
- [64:42]
The Verge Host
It was edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.
- [64:53]
Sarah
All right, time to discuss the book, ladies.
- [64:56]
T Mobile Customer
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Sarah
That's not really the point of the club.
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Sarah
Oh, plot twist.
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