Razer Switchblade: World of Warcraft in Your Pocket?

It's an Intel Atom-powered handheld that's like a netbook and kind of not, and it just might put the world's most popular MMO

You'd probably play World of Warcraft on a laptop, but on a handheld? Probably not. Not unless they could offer enough key-space to manage the interface and came up with a way to compensate for the missing mouse that didn't suck.

Razer has an idea for a handheld that's might do just that. It's called the Razer Switchblade and while it's still in the conceptual stage, it's making the rounds at CES in Vegas this week.

Imagine an Intel Atom-powered netbook running Windows 7 that's not really a netbook (it's much smaller) with the graphical oomph to crunch moderately intensive games like World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, and.

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You'd probably play World of Warcraft on a laptop, but on a handheld? Probably not. Not unless they could offer enough key-space to manage the interface and came up with a way to compensate for the missing mouse that didn't suck.

Razer has an idea for a handheld that's might do just that. It's called the Razer Switchblade and while it's still in the conceptual stage, it's making the rounds at CES in Vegas this week.

Imagine an Intel Atom-powered netbook running Windows 7 that's not really a netbook (it's much smaller) with the graphical oomph to crunch moderately intensive games like World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, and.

Part of its ability to do so hinges on its relatively low--but high for 7-inch glossy LCD--resolution 1024x600 touchscreen.

And that's not all you can touch. Flip the Switchblade open and you'll discover what Razer's calling a "dynamic tactile keyboard." It's packing 45 keys, and here's the twist: Each one's a miniature color LCD.

That means each key can independently change its appearance, morphing from a simple QWERTY key bed into something that displays buttons found in the interface of whatever game you're playing.

You know your mod-customized World of Warcraft button overlay? Imagine that shifted off-screen, or rather below-screen, to the keyboard itself. Imagine keyboard buttons that look exactly as they do on the in-game overlay, not indirect mappings to QWERTY keys. No hitting a letter to trigger something, the keyboard becomes the buttons, dynamically, and ostensibly shifted around any way you like, with up to 45 slots to fiddle.

Imagine those keys capable of changing on-the-fly, i.e. context-sensitive key-mapping. The interface changes as what your doing changes.

The keys can even be animated. I'm not sure what you'd want to animate on a keypad--most of us want interfaces that help us keep our eyes off the keyboard, after all. Then again, Nintendo's DS uses two discrete screens. Surely there's a place for keypad animation if a game's designed to engage the concept properly.

The Switchblade packs most of the features you'd expect from a netbook, including Wi-Fi, mini-HDMI, USB 3.0, standard audio out and microphone jacks, and adds integrated 3G network support as well.

We've heard naught about price or availability. As noted above, the Switchblade is still in the concept stage (you can read more about it on Razer's official site), and Razer says even the Switchblade name could change. Whatever form (or name) it eventually takes, the company calls it a product "that will change the future of gaming."

If it's actually capable of channeling the world's most popular MMO through a device that fits in the palm of your hand--to say nothing of real-time strategy games and first-person shooters--it's hard to see how it won't, and it's nice to be able to write that without cringing for a change.

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