We Have To Go Back!

Happy holidays, readers!  I’ll try keep this one brief so you can get back to downing your eggnogs and stuffing stockings. I don’t know about you guys, but I love this season although it’s been a crazy couple of months of shopping and spending. It seems everyone I know has their birthday around this time of year so I hardly ever get to spoil myself for the season. This year I decided to change that and planned an impromptu trip to Hawaii. It was my first time there and it was AMAZING! Being a LOST fan, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ride an ATV through areas that were used in films and shows, including (yep, you guessed it) LOST. Aside from that, Hawaii is a beautiful place and I wished I could stay longer.

Anyway, I hope you fans are able to check everything off your list this year while saving a few bucks along the way. And most importantly, if you haven’t learned from my post above, it’s okay to spoil yourself sometime. Also don’t forget to swing by the Armory Store and check out the amazing bundle deals; maybe your friend wants the Switch 810 and you want FZ Fans, I highly recommend the bundles as a great buy. Oh, and the NZXT Limited Edition Helm (made of metal, not plastic as some of you speculated) comes free with purchase of a bundle deal. So, everyone gets a gift!

Alright, excuse the shameless plug, but I’m a sucker for great deals and it’d be ridiculous to pass up on the offer. Stay warm… and alive (“Armageddon” day)… and a very merry holiday to all of you! See you all in the new year!

Signing off,

Tina
{Lead Graphic Designer}

Mind of a Community

Community.  One word.

When NZXT brought me on in March of 2012, there was one goal in mind.  Reach out to the community, be part of the community.  I think that’s the biggest difference between NZXT and a lot of companies out there today.

In truth, I wouldn’t want to work for a company that didn’t listen to the community, and I’m thankful every day that I have the opportunity to be part of something that’s bigger than just a company.  NZXT wants to build a culture.  Not one of brand loyalty and profits and cult followings, but of a mentality of progress, change, and openness to everyone within the community.  To ideas big, small, or radical in their premise.

NZXT wants to be different, and not for the sake of being different.   It’s with this mindset that we move forward, we challenge ourselves to be better, make better products, design differently, and that goes for our community as well.

We need not look back more than a couple of years to the original Phantom.  A bold, asymmetric design that was different than anything else the company (or, any other company) had put out before.  The community had spoken, and NZXT listened.  The Phantom stands as one of the most modded cases out there today, and without the community, NZXT wouldn’t be the company it is today.

To the community of enthusiasts, modders, watercoolers, and gamers:  ”Thank you.”  You make us who we are.

-Jason “XNine” Worner
NZXT. Community Support

1 Month of Updates

Lots of stuff to talk about, yes i know it’s been a month but unfortunately work takes me around the world with spotty internet access. So, couple big things to talk about..

Computex 2011

I can’t believe it, the show’s actually growing! In an age where internet rules I was really suprised to hear that Computex grew 10% percent this year, I’m just hypothesizing here but perhaps many manufacturers like ourselves have consolidated our efforts to simply 1 show.

So this year’s pretty big for us, not too many big cases like the Phantom in 2010 but we’re expanding our line of products from just cases. I don’t know about you guys, but I was super excited to unveil the HAVIK 140, we did extensive tests internally and with some close partners because I knew how much first impression means to consumers nowadays. As a newcomer into the market, there’s no way we can disappoint. We also unveiled some upcoming mid-range products at the show and entry level products to fill our complete line of cases ( that includes that PINK PHANTOM that we promised our fans ). Love to hear what everyone thought about the upcoming lineup of NZXT Products, there will be more to come this week!

As with the show every year, I’m happy to see more people getting into the industry and helping to push the PC enthusiast and gaming market, I often don’t view competition with a negative point of view because at the end of the way we all have the same goal in mind. ( At least i hope :) )

New office!

Last week our partners in Taiwan moved into a brand new office and we had the opportunity to design an area just for NZXT. It’s the first time since starting this business where I felt like we really had a space of our own, the only word I can use to describe it is.. EPIC.

To the NZXT Team: It’s ok, we’ll have one here in LA one day… perhaps next to the beach. League of Legends with California weather and beach views… awesome. 

Games!

So over the weekend me and couple friends decided to try out Terraria ( Minecraft + Metroid + Mario says Seananners ) , I had just returned from my extended business trip in Asia so actually took a day off to rest, little did I know that after starting up the game I would spend about 5-6 hours straight and lose more sleep.

Terraria scares me, the tiered armor system with rare weapon drops reminds me of the reason why we got into WoW, and if they continue to update the game often I’m going to need someone to physically pry me away from the computer, afterall, we need to keep NZXT running :D

Life

This time in Asia I also had a somewhat awakening experience, a close business partner of ours lost a family member. I’ve experienced similiar events in the past but sometimes people get so busy trying to progress career and everything life throws at you we forget about those close and dear to us. Remember to always take a break in life to appreciate those around you.

OK! That about wraps it up for this past month of updates… our graphic designer suggests I write 10 articles then put it on a schedule.. but seriously, I prefer this spontaneous writing that I do here. Excuse any grammer mistakes and incomplete sentences. Take care everyone! :)

Happy Summer!

Computex 2011, nearly 2wks+ away

I’m not sure about everyone but I cannot wait for Computex! We’ve got a bunch of secret products that we’ll be showing to some select media and customers and we can’t wait to hear what they have to say about them. Over the past 3-4 years, NZXT has really established ourselves in the market as a brand, however, we’ve been mostly focused on radical and extreme designs ( I know some of our fans love us for it though ) and what everyone will find this year is that NZXT will branch our from our traditional business model. There’s quite a lot of products in the works already, but all you guys need to do is see what every other major brand in the market is doing you’ll know what NZXT is planning next. :)

Looking forward to seeing old friends of the media and customers during Computex, Let’s go have a blast!

And to my competitors ( and friends ) I wish you guys a good show, every Computex it’s a showdown between all the brands and may the best products win!

PS. I read news today about Facebook allegedly hiring PR to write negative stories about Google. Shame on you Facebook.

Computex 2011 and WoW

Well, it’s been nearly 1 since my last post and I wanted to get back into this habit before all the awesome 8 followers start complaining, it’s okay, I’m still on training wheels when it comes to blogging so I’m not expecting a huge audience.

So Computex 2011 is coming up! Exciting times because Computex is when all the media, customers, and manufacturers get together in Taipei to show off some of the newest and most exciting products coming in Q3/Q4. For most companies, including NZXT, this is a perfect time because Q3 and Q4 usually marks the high season so big product releases tend to wait until that time.

Lastly, I just wanted to bring up the subject of World of Warcraft, after being peer-pressured I finally gave in, so after hanging up my WoW Shaman for 6 years I decided to re-activate, it’s pretty amazing Blizzard actually kept my account. After about 30 minutes in the game, I realized immediately why I eventually had to quit the game, it’s just too addicting! But slaying the Alliance is always.. SO FUN.

Have a happy weekend everyone!

Happy April Fools everyone!

Hope everyone enjoyed all the great “concepts” from our favorite companies. Hats out to all the companies for making today such a happy day for us in the office.

Starcraft motion

Youtube in 1911

We’ve been getting quite a lot of feedback on our awesome PINK products, and I just want to make it official here that we are looking into it. Some customers even made it a point to call in and let us know, trust me, we are listening!

About Crysis 2: ATI has not fixed the crossfire issue yet. :(

H2 Launch! ( Yays and Boos ). Crysis 2 Woes. A letter to my team.

Crysis 2

First on the more fun things, after a week of Shogun 2, I finally moved on to Crysis 2. Only to find that there’s a bug with ATI Crossfire, this actually brings me to a point when software companies choose to be sponsored by one brand over another. In this case, this was NVIDIA over ATI. From a marketing and funding prospective this all sounds great, but at what cost to the end user who ends up not having a compatible card simply because their manufacturer wasn’t the one to foot the marketing bill. In my opinion, this is one of the major advantages of consoles, no worry about MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte or ATI, NVIDIA, etc. You just put the software in and you expect it to perform. I understand the idea of having competition but it should not come at the cost of end user experience. I’ve only played 30 minutes, I’ll see if i can give a quick review next week.

H2 Launch

Glad to finally launch a product we’ve been working on for awhile. I want to thank all the guys in the focus group for helping with the QA process and the fine tuning down to the last details, I know there’s still a lot of discussion about whether or not H2 is a good product but I think nature will take it’s course. I’m really excited about the H2 because it’s one of first of many:

1. Finally a “Classic” design that a lot of fans and users have been asking from NZXT. We purposely spent more time on the H2 to make it different from other cases on the market, users who look at the details will notice everything that’s gone into it.

2. The first product to go through the focus group. ( Go James, Dave, Craig and Jamie! )

3. The first product our new product designer worked on. ( Go Shin! )

4. Since June of last year, I finally decided to stop doing everything myself and hire a team of innovative, creative and young guys/gals who all love NZXT the same way I do, I love you all! :) I promise one day we’ll have an awesome office of our own! With our own room for League of legends!

So far there’s been the very good, good, average, and very bad reviews so I’m seeing a lot of debates in the forums. I’ve had the urge to write and vent but I didn’t want to do that under emotional pressure, that’s why I choose to use my blog to express myself. Monday was really a downer at the office, after seeing a youtube review of the H2, all the hype, expectations, and hope that we had put on H2 was shattered. I have to say, I was only able to watch it once, perhaps I’ll keep it in my favorites folder to watch when I need to show up to a meeting with a mean face :D It’s hard to describe the feeling watching it, it’s like if someone asked your child to go up in the middle of the classroom and have all the kids, teacher ridicule him. Well, after many sleepless nights i managed 8 hours of sleep yesterday, I’ve finally gotten over it. Like I said, we made a point to design a lot of neat features in the H2, and I still believe that users who buy it won’t be disappointed.

We will be making some slight changes to the way to powder coat our plastic/steel, it seems the rugged/rough finish are giving people the impression that it’s “cheap”.

Keep up the good work everyone, believe in everything that you do and don’t let the negative comments keep you down. As long as we stick together and try our best we’ll get there one day :)

At least weekly, I promise!

Hey everyone, I’m back again to update on what’s been happening here at NZXT. So to wrap up this past week…

1. Dragon Age 2 happened, so having just returned from Europe from a 2 week trip and jet lagging two days. DA2 came out, I beat it, in one week. I think I’m still paying for the lost of sleep this week. However, I have no regrets, the game was completely awesome, however, I can see Baldur’s Gate fanatics get angry over the simplified gameplay. I think one of the main factor the new gameplay system appeals to me is I simply don’t have the time to spend 60-80 hours on games in one week, and there’s so many games coming I feel pushed to finish one.

2. PAX is over! I hope those of you guys that visited enjoyed meeting some of the people here at NZXT and some of the giveaways we were doing. I know we also gave some sneak peaks of the upcoming H2, be sure to check the interwebs for all the details on 3.22! I know couple guys over at overclock.net already caught a glimpse of it.

3. Back to DA2, for those of you guys who have beaten it? How do you feel about the freedom in decisions in DA2? How did they impact you and do you feel that Bioware may be taking too much of human emotions to make us feel attached to the game? There are some scenarios ( i don’t want to spoil the game ) where I felt i should have more freedom is changing the outcome so i wanted to hear what everyone felt.

This week. It’s Shogun 2. It’s a good time to be a PC Gamer.

PS. For those PC Gaming haters out there

TGIF :)

Before we start I wanted to say I hope everyone in Japan is safe and we give our condolences to them. It’s unfortunate we have not found a way to predict earthquake yet and these events really strike at the heart because here in southern california we also have fears of a big one coming.

In more NZXT related news, PAX has officially started! If you guys have not had a chance please go check out our booth and say hi to Victoria and Va, they might even be able to pass some goodies along. ( I know for a fact they cleaned the office of our newly designed t-shirts ).

Mark your date guys, 3-22-2011, NZXT will be making an announcement on our new product, the H2. We’re really excited to show this product since it’s a long overdue successor to one of our original designs — the Hush. In 2007-2008 when we launched the Hush we were one of the first manufacturers to start using noise dampening material in the chassis, nowadays it’s pretty widespread but we’ve got some very cool features that will make the new H2 leaps and bounds above its predecessor.

Enjoy the weekend!

Cebit, China Firewall, Holland

Hey Everyone!

I apologize for the delay in updates but I’ve been on a super hectic travel schedule. First i was in Taiwan/China last week checking out some of the new exciting products that NZXT is going to release in the coming months, just to make sure that the quality standard is up to par.

The other really lame thing is being in China I had no access to facebook, tumblr, youtube, etc so I felt a bit blocked off from the world. One of the main reasons why I’m unable to stay out in China for that long.. I’m addicted to the latest updates and news.

So after being back in the states for ONE DAY, I’m now in 2C weather in Holland. We’re about to head over to Cebit tomorrow, unfortunately, we don’t have a booth there but we are always present to meet with customers and occasionally run into some friends from media. Maybe one day NZXT will have a official booth there, but my opinion is there I would rather be at the events where all our customers are, that means Quakecon, PAX, Dreamhack, Gamescom, etc. :)

I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated with interesting things I see, I’ve got my trusty camera with me so I’m all set to go.