Razer, the California-based gaming tech firm, has bought audio-visual entertainment company THX for an undisclosed amount, and now plans to help the firm expand into the growing Chinese cinema market as well as combine the two companies’ strengths in developing virtual reality technology.
Tan Min-Liang, Razer’s chief executive and co-founder, said the start-up had acquired the majority assets of THX, including its intellectual property.
Razer has 20 million gamers worldwide using keyboards, high-performance laptops and other paraphernalia for computer games.
San Fransisco-based THX, founded in 1983 by Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas, will continue to run independently, Tan said.
China’s cinema market is expected to surpass the United States in terms of box office revenue by 2017, according to PwC estimates.
“One of the big opportunities is that you’re seeing a massive, massive upswing of activity in cinemas in China and THX is well poised to be one of the biggest entertainment brands in China,” Tan said.
“Some of the fundamental problems in virtual reality, for example visual fidelity, audio spatial awareness, these are things that THX has a lot of fundamental IP that can feedback to the VR industry,” Tan said.
Razer launched a VR platform earlier this year called Open Source Virtual Reality providing a set of open hardware and software designs developed by Razer and its partners to facilitate VR functions.
Juniper Research predicts the VR hardware market will be worth US$50 billion by 2021, up from the expected US$5 billion revenues for this year.
Razer was founded in 2005 and produces systems, software and hardware for gamers.
Earlier this year, it raised US$75 million in funding from Hangzhou Liaison Interactive Technology, bringing its valuation to a reported US$1.5 billion.
Last month Razer launched a US$30 million venture fund called zVentures to invest in start-ups developing technology around the Internet of Things , or connected devices, virtual reality, alternate reality, robotics, analytics and e-sports.
