Razer to put Intel's RealSense depth-sensing tech into a Kinect-style camera built for game streaming and VR
Razer is putting Intel's depth-sensing tech into a VR and streaming camera — Razer is hardly the biggest name in virtual reality, but with the OSVR platform …
Context & Ripple Effects
Razer entered VR in January with the Android-based OSVR platform and its $199 dev kit headset, an open-source bet that needed peripherals to matter. Intel, meanwhile, had spent 2015 shrinking RealSense until the depth camera fit inside a 6-inch smartphone. This deal joins the two: Razer licenses Intel's sensor rather than building one, and Intel gains a consumer product channel outside its own devices.
First-order effects
- Razer gets Kinect-style background removal and 3D scanning for its streaming and VR stack without developing depth-sensing silicon itself — capability arrives by license, not R&D.
- Intel converts RealSense from an internal component into a revenue-bearing part of a third-party product line, extending the tech past phones and its own reference designs.
Second-order effects
- A $200 shipping product followed within months — the Stargazer webcam — turning this announcement into a real SKU that pressures conventional webcam makers on features like dynamic background removal.
- The camera gives Razer's OSVR ecosystem and its Lenovo gaming-PC partnership a differentiated input device, while Intel's reported plans for a RealSense-based AR headset show the same sensor feeding Intel's own hardware ambitions in parallel.
Third-order effects
- Depth sensing is migrating from a bundled console peripheral (Kinect) to a licensable module any hardware maker can embed — if that pattern holds, machine-perception cameras become commodity infrastructure rather than a platform exclusive.
- Sensor suppliers like Intel gain leverage over where computing happens next: whoever's depth camera ships inside headsets, webcams, and phones sets the baseline for gesture and spatial interfaces across categories.
The trend: Depth-sensing hardware is shifting from closed console peripherals toward licensable modules that third-party makers embed across gaming, streaming, and VR devices.