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Last year, Razer launched two products with haptic feedback being the front and centre of attention: the Freyja seat pad and the Kraken V4 Pro headset. We tested and reviewed both products and while the latter is very good, its steep price tag is a bit of a barrier. In the case of the Freyja, though, it’s really about usage. After all, how many games are going to be better just because you can feel vibrations through your legs and back? Well, now that I’ve tried them together at GDC 2025, I know exactly what kind of gamer is going to love them.
To cut to the chase, it’s sim racing. I sat on the Freyja and wore the Kraken V4 Pro headset while playing Assetto Corsa Competizione using a Razer/Fanatec direct-drive setup. After a few sighting laps in a Lambo, I set about trying to throw down some hot lap times, all while ignoring Razer’s haptic gear rumbling away.
At first, I found it somewhat distracting but after five minutes or so, it all clicked into place. Coupled with the force feedback through the steering wheel, I could sense braking points more accurately, where the front was understeering, and the lap times began to tumble. Rather than having to use my ears to judge traction out of corners, listening to the engine’s revs climbing too fast or too slow, I could feel it instead.
Or rather, I got a sense of the changes because no vibrating haptic system can replace actual forces on your body, as you accelerate and brake. But hell’s bells if it isn’t damn impressive.
I asked Razer if it had plans to bring a full racing seat with Freyja fully integrated into it and got a wry smile and a “We can’t comment on unannounced products” reply, but I’d bet my last penny that Razer is certainly considering it. The current version of Freyja has nothing around your sides but built into a racing bucket seat, you could certainly do an even better job of simulating cornering forces on your body.
But even if Razer has made such a product and is currently testing it out, it doesn’t mean it’ll ever see the light of day at retail. Sim racing is hugely popular but in the grand scheme of all things gaming, it’s a very niche market and introducing a super-duper Freyja system into such a sector will likely only result in relatively small sales.
That would require it to have a high price tag to offset the low volumes but given how expensive the current Freyja system is, it could easily be priced out of consideration. That said, a full motion-capable sim rig is many thousands of dollars, and a proper racing Freyja chair could slot in between a static wheel setup and an all-bells-and-whistles rig, in terms of price.
Something else that Razer announced at GDC is that it’s combining all of its software SDKs into one, called Wyvrn, and it will be fully integrated into Unreal Engine 5.5—that means any future racing games developed on that engine should be able to easily get the most out of any Freyja, Kraken, and wheel setup.
The only bad thing I noticed with the whole Freyja racing setup is that I don’t have one at home and now I’m a bit sad. Mind you, I’m not sure how well my cats would respond to my office vibrating like a jackhammer while I’m hooning around in Assetto Corsa.
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Kurt Indovina
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