Tablet PCs have flirted with mobile gaming, and there are some fun titles out there that are playable on higher end Android and iPad devices. But it’s not a true gaming platform, at least not yet. Give Razer a chance to shake things up. The gaming peripheral maker is throwing its hat into the tablet ring with its “Project Fiona PC Gaming Tablet” (from here on out it’s just “Fiona”), a concept slate designed to play today’s most popular PC games with a funky (Razer says “intuitive”) control setup.
You won’t find a Tegra chip inside or any other ARM-based variant, and it’s not rocking an Atom processor. Nope, the Fiona brings a fully fledged Core i7 processor to the tablet party, giving it more in common with a PC than a tablet, Razer says. It also makes it easy for game developers to write apps for the device, considering x86 has been around since the Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed the Earth.
Fiona features a dual-game controller design with ultra precise accelerometers and a highly sensitive multi-touch screen, according to Razer. It looks funktastic, yet oddly promising (see photo gallery below).
“While multi-touch screens have become the de facto user interface for tablets, they are not the right interface for serious PC gaming,” said Min-Liang Tan, CEO, Razer. “The user interface we have designed for Project Fiona allows all existing PC games to be played right out of the box and also provides game developers new opportunities as they develop next-gen games on a highly-intuitive platform. Both developers and gamers are going to love the new user interface that combines the best of a gamepad, multi-touch screen and accelerometers for an all-new gaming experience on-the-go.”
Force feedback is also part of the package. All this fun will come at a cost — somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 (less, not more, Razer says). Razer expects to ship Fiona in the fourth quarter of this year.
Image Credit: Razer
