Gaming peripheral brand Razer has made a couple of arcade sticks in the past, primarily its Panthera and Atrox lines, which have both been discontinued. Now, it looks like the company is gunning for a comeback in this space, but with a twist. The company now has the Razer Kitsune, but rather than the usual arcade stick, this is a leverless controller, popularised by the Hit Box.
Which is an interesting direction to head to in making a comeback to the arcade controller scene. This is because leverless controllers have had their share of controversy over the years, to say nothing of what the input result should be when more than one directional button is pressed at a time. On this particular point though, MP1st reports that the Razer Kitsune was made with the company working closely with Capcom. So at the very least, this won’t be a problem for Street Fighter tournaments.
Looking next at what little information is available on the official site, the Razer Kitsune looks to be a lot thinner than the average arcade stick. In fact, it looks to be about the same thickness as a low-profile keyboard. While this likely means that it will be fairly lightweight, it also means that there will likely not be any avenues for modding. Not that you would need to, since it is already using the company’s low-profile linear optical switches, and being optical switches, they will likely last longer than the Chroma RGB strip that surrounds the board.
Overall, this looks like a pretty exciting product, even for someone who doesn’t use arcade sticks for fighting games. Sadly, no details are available on pricing or availability of the Razer Kitsune, let alone for the local market. The silver lining is, according to the report by MP1st, it will launch some time later this year, while a Razer representative tells us that it will be on shelves in September. And when it does, the standard black coloured arcade controller will launch alongside two Street Fighter 6 special editions, one featuring Cammy and the other featuring Chun-Li.
