SteelSeries Teases Mouse With Integrated Screen

Gaming mice range from the simple to the ridiculous, though they tend to unite on at least one aspect: "expensive". In the world of gaming hardware, novelty is a constant struggle, and boutique manufacturer SteelSeries has something up their sleeves that certainly qualifies. The company posted two photos to their Twitter account today, showing off what appears to be the tail end of a gaming mouse with an integrated screen of some kind. Thousands of PC gamers' wallets are already feeling lighter.

Of course, the purpose of a screen on a mouse wouldn't be to display anything overly rich – for one thing, your palm would cover it most of the time, and for another, these screens (if that's what they are) seem way too low-resolution to be of any use there. No, I'm betting that they're a method of visually confirming polling and refresh rates. Most high-end gaming mice allow players to actively change the refresh rate of the optical or laser sensor, making for a tighter or looser control. Previously the only indication of this has been eithersome rudimentery LEDs on the mouse itself or a manager program on the PC, neither of which is an ideal method of checking in the heat of multiplayer online battle.

Here's an up-close photo of what appears to be the screen:

Whatever SteelSeries has cooking, we won't have to wait too long to find out: the company claims they'll be unveiling something new next week, probably at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Will yet another method of input feedback woo famously finicky PC gamers? It all depends on what kind of utility the mouse or mice have, not to mention how much they cost.