In brief: We've seen some pretty wild gaming chair concepts over the years, most of which would probably never work as real consumer products (see: Acer's $14,000 Thronos). For better or worse, we're seeing that again this year in the form of Razer's somewhat outlandish "Project Brooklyn."
On the surface, without any of its fancy functions switched on, Project Brooklyn is a pretty standard gaming chair, albeit one with an odd L-shaped base. It has the same "racerback" design you'd see in a chair from Secretlab or DXRacer, and a similar bucket-style seat.
However, once you activate some of its less-obvious functions, Project Brooklyn transforms from a regular chair into what Razer calls a "full-fledged entertainment rig," capable of delivering "Breathtaking, next-gen immersion" for PC and console gaming. See it in action in the video below.
Yeah, as we said, it's not exactly a practical concept. The technology behind that giant, retractable screen at the top – which can somehow bend like paper – is probably at least a decade away by itself. And that's to say nothing of the engineering difficulties associated with essentially packing a full retractable (and ideally sturdy) table into two small 4D armrests.
To top it all off, Brooklyn would boast "tactile feedback" built directly into the chair, to further enhance immersion.
To Razer's credit, it knows this idea is far-fetched. As is the case with most other CES reveals, this is just a concept that showcases Razer's vision for the future of gaming, across both console and PC platforms. To that end, we'd say Project Brooklyn accomplishes its goal nicely.
While it won't come out anytime soon, it's a neat idea and one we certainly wouldn't mind "gaming" furniture makers borrowing a few ideas from. The built-in table is a cool idea, and a seat-mounted monitor – albeit not one with a paperlike curve – isn't entirely outside the realm of possibility.