Razer plants the flag for open standards for gamers with Forge TV and OSVR (video)

LAS VEGAS — Min-Liang Tan, the chief executive of Razer, doesn’t view Razer as a gaming company. Rather, he says it’s a company for gamers. It builds products with the enthusiast Razer brand that gamers would want to own, and that’s not always purely a gaming device.

The latest example of that thinking is Forge TV, an Android-based microconsole that will debut early this year for $100. I caught up with Tan at the Razer booth (which was bathed in Razer’s green-and-black signature colors) at the 2015 International CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week. Forge TV was among 600 gaming products debuting at CES, and Tan was quite proud of it.

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One reason is that he views Razer’s product as a way to keep gaming open for gamers who may not want to invest both in a gaming PC and a PC gaming machine for the living room, as Valve proposes to do with its Steam Machines. Rather, Tan said that Forge TV will bring a wide selection of games to play, not just those on Valve’s Steam digital distribution service.

Streamed PC games will come to the Forge, which is 4.1 inches square, with the launch of Razer’s upcoming Cortex: Stream Launcher in the spring.

With the Open Source Virtual Reality platform, also announced by Carlsbad, Calif.-based Razer this week, Tan is also carrying the flag of openness for gamers. Rather than see everyone tied to Facebook’s Oculus Rift platform, Tan believes that virtual reality software on the PC should be able to work with just about any head-mounted display.

Check out our video interview with Tan below.