Stu Grubbs sat down for an interview with Kim Rom of SteelSeries recently at Newegg LANfest 2k7. Questions were regarding development, testing, and theory behind the new SteelSeries Ikari mouse. The following is a verbatim transcript of the conversation (with expletives edited out of course ;] )

How many designs did you go through when you were coming up with the Ikari? What was your process for coming up with the shape and such?

We started actually from the ground up. This was a learning experience for us; we had never done a mouse before. We thought there were definite rooms for improvement for the product line of mice in general. We actually started by reading a thick book about ergonomics and it took forever to get through that and it was one of the most boring experiences of my life, but that was actually how we started. Then we came up with a number of different shapes. Next step was me flying to New York to test with Team 3D where they got hands on with the shapes. I then flew to Dallas, stayed at the complexity house for a few days and had those guys test it. Went back to the drawing board with all the feedback we got. Went down to do a tour in Europe where we talked to some of the mouseports guys and members from SK and NoA.

And that is actually how we defined the shape, based on the input we got from those guys; “I aim like this”, and “I hold the mouse like this”. That was actually how we finalized the shape.


You came out with both optical and laser and you were telling me at the booth that you guys have really improved the laser engine in there with 40,000 samples per second. What does the normal gaming mouse do right now?

A normal gaming mouse usually has around 7 to 9 thousand frames per second. But because this is a completely new technology I cant even describe it as frames per second, obviously it is samples per second, and our mouse has 40,000 samples per second. The samples per second is way more important than any inflated bullshit DPI number. The difference is that it’s all about getting communication between you, the device you’re using and your computer. The more communication you have obviously the more accurate and precise you can be as a player, whereas DPI is more or less a worthless number.

But don’t you have a DPI setting on there?

Of course we have a DPI setting – or let me say we have a CPI setting. DPI stands for dots per inch. Dots per inch has absolutely nothing to do with mice. You don’t have dots on your computer right? You have, you know, counts. So CPI stands for counts per inch. We go up to 3200 counts per inch, but again, its simply not an important number.

But with such a powerful laser engine, why do the optical as well?

Because up until now laser technology has simply not been good enough for FPS games. If you are using one of the current laser mice on the market and you are an fps gamer, you are robbing yourself of performance – you are literally robbing yourself of performance. And as most of the GotFrag readers would probably realize, if you go to any Counter-Strike tournament anywhere in the world, you’ll see that 90 to 97% of all gamers are actually using optical technology – there’s a reason for that.