Tuesday, July 26th 2022

Welcome to a New Age of Play with the Aurora Collection by Logitech G
Today, Logitech G introduced the Aurora Collection, a new collection featuring the G735 Wireless Gaming Headset, G715 Wireless Gaming Keyboard, G713 Gaming Keyboard, G705 Wireless Gaming Mouse and eight custom accessories. The new collection was designed to be gender inclusive, not gender exclusive, addressing the needs and wants of women gamers while also appealing to all gamers who are looking for a playful design and curated experience. The Aurora Collection has a distinctive aesthetic and design language while also allowing for personalization through custom accessories and color options. It also includes Logitech G's advanced gaming grade technologies like LIGHTSPEED high-performance wireless technology and Blue VO!CE microphone technology. The result is a collection of gear that invites all gamers to come as they are, while delivering the advanced feature set all gamers expect.
"Much of the gaming industry has been stuck in a one-size-fits-all mentality. But that hasn't reflected the wide range of consumers who are focused on self-expression and playing games for fun, and it certainly didn't fit Logitech's commitment to delivering solutions for all gamers. When we looked at our own gaming products, we realized we could be doing more," said Ujesh Desai, Vice President and General Manager of Logitech G. "With the Aurora Collection we've created a gender-inclusive collection centered around comfort, approachability and playfulness that supports our long-term commitment to enabling everyone to experience the joy of play."The Aurora Collection was conceptualized based on the feedback from women gamers across the community and brought to life by a team of predominantly women innovation, design, engineering and marketing leaders at Logitech. The collection was created to meet the gaming desires and needs of an underrepresented segment of gamers and reimagine the future of gaming where representation is firmly present. And the design process was guided by the following three principles:
The Aurora Collection consists of:
Like all of our gaming products, the entire Aurora collection is certified carbon neutral, which means that we finance high-quality certified carbon offsets to reduce the carbon impact of the product to zero. The products include post-consumer recycled content, and the paper packaging comes from FSC-certified forests. By choosing these gaming products, you're doing your part to help support responsible management of the world's forests.
Pricing and Availability
All products for the collection are available on LogitechG.com and at global retailers. The Logitech G735 has a suggested retail price of $229.99. The Logitech G715 and Logitech G713 TKL Gaming Keyboards have suggested retail prices of $199.99 and $169.99, respectively. The special edition Blue Yeti USB microphone for the Aurora Collection has a suggested retail price of $129.99. The Logitech G705 has a suggested retail price of $99.99. Accessories for the collection are available at www.logitechg.com. For more information, please visit our website, our blog or connect with us @LogitechG.
Source:
Logitech G
"Much of the gaming industry has been stuck in a one-size-fits-all mentality. But that hasn't reflected the wide range of consumers who are focused on self-expression and playing games for fun, and it certainly didn't fit Logitech's commitment to delivering solutions for all gamers. When we looked at our own gaming products, we realized we could be doing more," said Ujesh Desai, Vice President and General Manager of Logitech G. "With the Aurora Collection we've created a gender-inclusive collection centered around comfort, approachability and playfulness that supports our long-term commitment to enabling everyone to experience the joy of play."The Aurora Collection was conceptualized based on the feedback from women gamers across the community and brought to life by a team of predominantly women innovation, design, engineering and marketing leaders at Logitech. The collection was created to meet the gaming desires and needs of an underrepresented segment of gamers and reimagine the future of gaming where representation is firmly present. And the design process was guided by the following three principles:
- Comfort: In the design phase, the team made sure to take things into account like longer hair, glasses, earrings, and smaller hand sizes. Not stopping at fit. The team prioritized products that felt and looked good to support longer play sessions, exploring different materials and finishes that were lightweight and soft to the touch.
- Approachability: To address areas of opportunity around approachability the team broke away from the typical sharp edges, black colorways and loud aesthetics to create a more welcome experience featuring softer tonalities, translucent materials and soothing out-of-box lighting.
- Playfulness: The Aurora Collection encourages self-expression. The products come in base White Mist with the ability to customize using Pink Dawn and Green Flash accessories. Players can also show off their creative side with thousands of customizable lighting combinations available in G HUB with Aurora Collection signature lighting that we call Play Moods.
The Aurora Collection consists of:
- G735 Wireless Gaming Headset - Featuring a White Mist finish, ethereal RGB lighting, and on-ear dual-audio mixing, the G735 is a versatile option for any player. G735 is the first Logitech G headset with the new Blue VO!CE microphone technology features to modulate a player's voice and have the ability to save preferred audio settings in G Hub and directly on the headset. The G735 Wireless Gaming Headset also maximizes comfort for all players and is inclusive of smaller head sizes. Players can enjoy long gaming sessions with 56+ hr battery life (without lighting), and experience wireless freedom through Logitech G's award winning LIGHTSPEED wireless technology, and Bluetooth connectivity.
- G715 and G713 Mechanical Gaming Keyboards - The G715 Wireless Gaming Keyboard and G713 Gaming Keyboard deliver low-key vibes with high-key performance so players can express themselves and play their way. A compact, tenkeyless layout, and adjustable height ensure comfort all-day long. Pack it up and place it anywhere with a rechargeable battery that delivers 25 hours of non-stop gaming, and LIGHTSPEED wireless or Bluetooth connectivity. Both keyboards come with an included Cloud-Soft palm rest for all-day comfort.
- G705 Wireless Gaming Mouse -G705 Wireless Gaming Mouse is purpose-built for smaller hands with compact contoured fit, and advanced gaming technology. At just 85 grams, G705 is designed for long-lasting, lightweight comfort and performance. With a gaming-grade sensor, ultra-responsive LIGHTSPEED wireless, Bluetooth connectivity, and an easy-reach DPI-cycling button, gamers can play their best.
- Accessories - Take your collection a step further with eight new accessories including whimsical touches like the cloud-shaped palmrest, cable charm, and heart shaped carrying case. Other accessories include ear pads and boom mics, G713 and G715 keyboard top plates, keycap puller and brush, and mousepad for gamers to customize their play style.
Like all of our gaming products, the entire Aurora collection is certified carbon neutral, which means that we finance high-quality certified carbon offsets to reduce the carbon impact of the product to zero. The products include post-consumer recycled content, and the paper packaging comes from FSC-certified forests. By choosing these gaming products, you're doing your part to help support responsible management of the world's forests.
Pricing and Availability
All products for the collection are available on LogitechG.com and at global retailers. The Logitech G735 has a suggested retail price of $229.99. The Logitech G715 and Logitech G713 TKL Gaming Keyboards have suggested retail prices of $199.99 and $169.99, respectively. The special edition Blue Yeti USB microphone for the Aurora Collection has a suggested retail price of $129.99. The Logitech G705 has a suggested retail price of $99.99. Accessories for the collection are available at www.logitechg.com. For more information, please visit our website, our blog or connect with us @LogitechG.
52 Comments on Welcome to a New Age of Play with the Aurora Collection by Logitech G
Just because it's not targeted at you - doesn't make it bad, ffs. Grow up.
Just admit it if you are wrong or explain why you arnt man jeez.
This for example: Glasses? I wear glasses. I'm a male. Longer hair--are girls not allowed short hair? Is Logi telling woman to grow long hair? And only women wear earings. What about pirates? See the freaking contradiction?
I state again, it is only correct that gaming periperhals reflect the broad tastes of separate identities, regardless what they are. And those tastes ought to be accepted and the gaming community ought to be inclusive.
But this PR piece from Logitech is a blatant, tone-deaf, and manufactured piece of crap.
Heck, it's kind of hilarious how this grand irony of all of this is lost on you and the others expressing similar sentiments - you're explicitly and unequivocally providing proof for the value and importance of initiatives like this (no matter if this specific example might be ham-fisted, cynical/exploitative, or otherwise flawed). ... last I checked we're all writing in English in an English-language forum? That kind of silly pedantry is incredibly transparent and dumb, so please refrain from it. "Retarded" in English is a derogatory term for someone with intellectual or physical disabilities, and that was precisely the way the word was being used here. Trying to hand-wave it away as "technically it means yadda-yadda" is the most transparent bad-faith rhetorical move known to mankind. Please stop, you're just making yourself look even worse. Maybe take a look in the mirror, dude? This literally made me laugh out loud, coming from just having read the previous quote. That's your right, and AFACT nobody has shown any interest in denying you that right. All we've done is disagree with your put-downs and crying over how terrible it is that our hobby is diversifying. You seem to have missed about half my questions here. Your own preferences aren't especially unusual, but are you actually claiming that you are unaware of the massive amount of effort spent by tons of PC enthusiasts on making their rigs look good? Remember, your statement that I questioned was that which, while it might be true for you (though your statement above says otherwise - you're clearly putting a significant amount of thought and personality into your component choices, and while these might not be oriented towards looks and showing off primarily, none of that makes it any less of a self-expression - not all self-expression is extroverted, and "function before form" is an aesthetic ideal in and of itself), your initial statement was a generalization about (all) gamers. Which even a 30-second look on these forums, Reddit, or whereever else will show you is demonstrably untrue. The thing is, bashing the "bandwagon jumping" is a reactionary rhetorical move done - consciously or not - to try and avoid the consequences of representing said reactionary beliefs. Why is "jumping on the bandwagon" bad? Only if you think the thing represented by said "bandwagon" itself is bad, but you're avoiding attacking the subject directly by instead framing it as being anti-trendy rather than being anti-inclusive. Which, to even the most casual observer, is plain-faced, obvious and transparent BS. And, of course, framing it as "jumping on the bandwagon" is in and of itself a bad-faith and highly selective framing of reality, simplifying complex societal developments into "trends" and "fashion", again only worthy of criticism if you think the thing represented by said "bandwagon" is bad.
It's really, really simple to differentiate between good-faith and bad-faith applications of this type of critique: a good-faith approach will focus on the conflict between the nature of bandwagon-jumping and the cause nominally being represented, while a bad-faith approach will lump both together into a rejection or critique of both. Why? Because the fundamental thing that makes "jumping on the bandwagon" bad is the implication that the person/entity involved doesn't actually mean what they're saying or doing. Which only works as a critique if you agree with what they're saying they are doing in the first place. Otherwise? You're just looking for cheap tricks to dismiss something you don't like. I agree that the PR blurb from this is ... something (I brought this up, though indirectly, in my first response here), and some of your critiques here are absolutely valid. However, you are being far too generous with the people being "critical" of this still. Why? Because the rhetoric and responses are straight out of the online reactionary/borderline far-right edgelord playbook, including but not limited to
- "If [company] keeps doing [things aimed at others than me in addition to the things they're already doing which are aimed at me] I will shop elsewhere"
- "We don't need more diversity"/"There's no lack of diversity here"/"the way things have always been, and which suits me and my demographic, is obviously neutral and inclusive (despite clear evidence to the contrary)"
- "Emotional"/"retarded"/"crying" etc.
Not to mention that the discussion hews quite clearly towards criticizing the initiative rather than the ham-fisted, transparently cynical and borderline self-parodying way it is presented - with the exception of a couple of posts. I completely agree that that press release is rather absurd, but ... well, it's a corporation. They are, generally, absurd. Their logics and modes of expression generally do not align with my experiences of how humans think or function. This is no more or less extreme than most other press releases, it just does the same thing differently. It might thus be more surprising, but the posting here makes clear that a lot of the people responding take offense just as much to the views being presented as to the absurdist form of it. I mostly agree with you here. The good thing about this, that makes me not bother being too critical about the ham-fisted, borderline self-parody of the PR here? That most people won't ever see this PR, or at most, they'll be exposed to a few promo shots in passing. Press releases are generally not read by ... well, people. So, the end result is mostly the availability of a broader, more diverse selection of equipment for a hobby already enjoyed by a very diverse group of (literally hundreds of millions of) people. Beyond that, to me this is standard fare corporate nonsense, no different than the thousands upon thousands of un-selfconsciously hypermasculine PR blurbs for other, comparable stuff. Yet, somehow, people only really get riled up when this stupid PR BS is framing something different. Almost as if ... oh, I don't know, some of these people take more offense at the thing being expressed than the ham-fisted corporate appropriation of it?
However, what stands out in this thread isn't criticizing the cynicism involved, but the degree of criticism and how it is formulated. Do we ever see companies being called "retarded" or people sayign they'll never buy from them again for putting out yet another red-and-black-and-covered-in-dragons or angular black+RGB design? People calling them joke products? Generally not - though the more extreme cases do tend to get made a bit of fun of, there is a major disparity in the intensity and tone of responses. And, of course, there are the tired-ass "people get so emotional", "we don't have a diversity problem" or the sweet, sweet irony of people shouting "NOBODY CARES" (then why are they shouting?) - all of which speak eloquently to this triggering a dislike that goes well beyond any reaction to cynical corporate PR nonsense.
The marketing is well worth criticising, but the people making the best case for that in this thread so far are not the people most critical of this announcement overall. And that says something.
Unlike, say, greenwashing, I see no fundamental issue with marketing like this - it's superficial, silly and transparent, but the creation of the products has the actual real-world positive effect of giving more choice, so as long as one accept that (for now) we're living in a borderline dystopian capitalist hellscape in which there is no such thing as ethical consumption, at least this provides a tiny sliver of freedom in another direction. Capitalism, as always, eats everything, and will take whatever matters the most to you, strip it of its soul, meaning and worth, and sell it back to you in as high quantities and with as high margins as possible, so obviously the marketing is going to be hyperbolic, feel weird, but try to appeal to whatever some group sees as good. That's universal, and I see no reason to critique that more in this case than any other, save for the copy perhaps being slightly more stupidly written than normal. But for a press release trying to be anything but dry as a bone, that's once again expected.
That be a closure coming.
Logitech was on my "meh, no thx" list in the past few years (even though they revolutionized the industry in 2018 with the G PRO Wireless, and the G915 TKL is really lovely – well, except those abysmal ABS keycaps, which are joke in that price range), but this press release... I'm slowly starting to feel inclined to wish bankruptcy on them. Or on any company, that even remotely rides this wave, which poisons gullible minds with empty buzzwords in the second half of the past decade for that matter. Just based on principle alone. I'm a male btw, who played a lot of Sims back in the day and love JRPGs, and also a hardcore (classic) Doomer and competitive ex-Quaker, who absolutely adores colorful peripherals, even in light pink, if it's tasteful. This is nothing special. Associating colors with genders might hold some truth in itself, but also a pretty sexist concept as well, if it's specifically targeted.
Also a new, small ergo mice, which could be interesting, but it weights 85 (EIGHTY-FIVE) grams. Really, Logitech? In 2022? Why? If you spew this gender trash (Razer was much more elegant about it, never had a negative thought regarding that, but quite the contrary), shouldn't it be more lighter, since females tend to have significantly less physical strength than males in general? Oh wait, you are EMPOWERING them I reckon, for the purpose of building some serious muscles. This is also the reason for the female model to have a buzz cut, right? Get lost...
Just make that damned G305 Superlight with ~53ish grams already, without stupid ads, and bath in money, more than you do now. Also, please start using good microswitches and virgin grade PTFE instead of cheap Omron (20/50Ms) and leukoplast on your 100 $(+) mice, since THAT would be way more "gender-inclusive"...
/rant off, going back to Pulsar, G-Wolves and Atompalm : D
I'm for equality but I also despise marketing campaigns from corporations that try to manipulate relevant and important social issues. I think that is what pisses most people off. It's not the product demographic, it's the awful and misjudged marketing.
It is obvious that whenever a corporation adopts any kind of progressive language, it will be a lie on some level. Corporations literally cannot be actually progressive, as they are in a hegemonic position of power - they are intrinsically a part of the structure of the system, and thus can't actually work for radical change of the system. That doesn't mean that people working for them can't hold these values or opinions, or can't work to meld these values into their work. This is how slow societal shifts happen without major societal structures changing. And, crucially, capitalism eats everything - i.e. it will take whatever anyone comes up with, including explicitly anticapitalist politics, churn it up and try to sell it back to you. A huge part of how capitalism sustains itself as a global hegemonic system of dominance is through its ability to include performative oppositionalities and rebellions within its overall structures, as that makes it nearly impossible to differentiate between "real" or "fake" resistance - and to some extent makes the distinction meaningless. An exploited population is less likely to rebel if you can keep them satisfied by showing them someone else seeming to do so in a visible, performative manner.
So: it's obvious that this is mainly marketing. Does that make it disingenuous? Sure, to some extent, though it is impossible to judge to which degree. But does that matter? No. Why? Because it is literally no different whatsoever from everything else we're surrounded by at all times, outside of the single difference of which groups or values are referenced. And that's what makes the "counterarguments" here fall apart. If these people were against corporate appropriation for marketing purposes as a general principle, then they wouldn't only be complaining about these types of moves - they'd be equally up in arms about anything targeting stereotypical gamers, or dads, or sysadmins, or whatever - any appeal to a group, value, or emotion. Instead, their posts carry a level of affect and emotion that doesn't match the purported "I'm just protesting against corporate lying" logic, a level of affect worded in such a way that it typically either expresses a feeling of being threatened, or a feeling of having something taken away from you. Both of which are not only complete nonsense, but incompatible with this being any kind of principled argument against corporate PR BS. These are not principled arguments, they are reactionary knee-jerk reactions with a thin skin of "rational" "justice" in order to hide the fact that they're mainly just being defensive and feel threatened. And when what is threatening is corporations trying to sell stuff to people belonging to different groups than you? Well, that speaks to a rather thin skin and oversensitive threat detection mechanisms.
See ya, bring your pseudo-moralistic stances™ elsewhere, I'm not buying them. Maybe you should try getting a job at Logitech's PR department; they'll desperately need such a talent if they are planning on keeping up with this shit. Check. Mate. : D
As for the whole "oh, you don't mean this, you're just acting this way for cred" spiel, that is such a thin, washed-out, used-up, blind, ridiculously bad-faith derailing tactic that ... do you actually think that riles people up, or somehow scores you any points? If that's all you've got, then you really need to do better. Also, suggesting someone voicing an explicit critique of capitalism wants to get a job in a PR department is ... man, you're cracking me up :laugh: I've got to remember that one.