Razer to put Intel's RealSense depth-sensing tech into a Kinect-style camera built for game streaming and VR
Adi Robertson / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Intel has spent 2015 shrinking RealSense into everything it can reach: an Acer gaming laptop shipped with the depth camera in January, and by April Intel showed a version small enough for a 6-inch smartphone. Days before this story, Intel extended the tech to mobile entirely via its RealSense partnership with Google's Project Tango.
Razer's move gives RealSense its first dedicated gaming peripheral — a standalone, Kinect-style camera aimed at streamers and VR rather than a component buried inside someone else's device. The bet landed: by January 2016 Razer shipped it as the $200 Stargazer webcam, with dynamic background removal and 3D face scanning as headline features.
First-order effects
- Streamers get Kinect-style gesture control and background removal without owning an Xbox or a green screen, making the camera a direct peripheral play for Razer's PC-gaming audience.
- Intel gains a consumer-facing showcase for RealSense outside laptops and phones, with Razer as the first gaming brand to productize the sensor.
Second-order effects
- A third-party Kinect-style camera puts pressure on Microsoft's category-defining Kinect, which now faces competition built on Intel's sensor stack instead of its own.
- Background removal and 3D scanning become table-stakes features for gaming webcams, forcing rivals like Logitech to answer with depth-sensing models of their own or concede the streamer segment.
Third-order effects
- If RealSense keeps spreading across form factors — laptops, phones via Tango, peripherals, and reportedly an Intel AR headset in development per WSJ sourcing — Intel is assembling a cross-device depth-sensing ecosystem rather than selling one-off components.
- For game developers, a common depth-camera standard across PC peripherals lowers the cost of supporting gestures and 3D input, echoing what Kinect did for console motion games but distributed across vendors.
The trend: Intel is positioning RealSense as a cross-platform depth-sensing layer spanning laptops, phones, gaming peripherals, and headsets, with gaming partners like Razer as its consumer beachhead.