Simulation games

Hey guys, George from CORSAIR here. As you guys have seen, the acquisition of Fanatec has been completed and we’re excited to welcome the Fanatec guys to the family. I’ve seen a few posts around here and other places, and I wanted to address some of the concerns you have directly, so there’s an official response. There are a lot of things covered in this post by Andy, CORSAIR's founder and CEO.

Q: Will CORSAIR honor my Fanatec warranties? Will my product still receive software updates?

A: Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: CORSAIR has every intention of continuing to support Fanatec customers. Ensuring that you have full confidence in your product reliability and support is something we take very seriously. We have done the same for our previous acquisitions (Elgato, OriginPC, SCUF, etc.)

Q: Why did CORSAIR buy Fanatec?

A: Because Fanatec is a legend in sim racing, and because CORSAIR has been looking to expand into sim racing for a while now. A number of employees at CORSAIR have Fanatec sim racing hardware and sim setups, and we have long been aware of their role in growing the sim racing hobby.

Q: What is CORSAIR going to do with Fanatec? Are you guys going to change a bunch of stuff? Will everything suddenly get cheaper or worse?

A: Our first objective is going to be to ensure the uninterrupted availability and customer service of Fanatec product. We also hope to leverage our worldwide distribution network to make Fanatec products more accessible to customers worldwide.

Or, to put it more simply, we want to take existing Fanatec gear and put it in more stores.

As for product quality, CORSAIR focuses heavily on product reliability and quality. Due to our experience manufacturing our existing product lines (Cases, coolers, power supplies, keyboards, mice, game controllers, gaming chairs, etc.) we have a substantial amount of quality control and material procurement expertise that we plan to leverage to help Fanatec accelerate their roadmap and execute new product launches more frequently.

Q: Is CORSAIR going to mandate what products Fanatec makes? Will you guys be ditching the Fanatec brand completely?

A: Fanatec will continue to function as its own business unit within the CORSAIR family in mostly the same way that Elgato does today, for example. To use a metaphor, this acquisition isn’t going to be an engine swap, it’s a supercharger install. Fanatec does what they do extremely well, all we want to do is help them do it better and put their product in front of more customers. The Fanatec brand will remain.

Q: What about the sim racing cockpit you guys showed at Computex and Gamescom? Is that still coming out? Will it be Fanatec branded now?

A: The sim racing cockpit is still in the works, nearly completed now. We’re just polishing everything and letting the wax cure, so to speak. We’ll have more details shortly. The user response has been fantastic. No details yet on branding but that’s a solid guess.

If you guys have any questions about the acquisition, please feel free to post them in the comments. This is just me answering from the CORSAIR side of things, the Fanatec guys are welcome to post here if they'd like, I'm sure they will be communicating to their customers and fans directly from their side too.

I'll be posting answers throughout the next couple days - if I don't know the answer, or I can't discuss it for some reason, I may just post that as a response, but I'll do what I can to answer your questions directly.

**QUESTION FOR YOU GUYS**

Since I'm here, what country are you in and where do you buy your sim racing gear?

The current mood within the community, this close to citcon, is unusually bad. It looks like CIG wont manage to keep their „all content shown will be released within 12 months“ announcement & Pyro, teased for 3 (?) years now, isnt even in evo yet. All we know about citcon is yet another „look at the road past Pyro“ - so an outlook at an outlook. I feel the only thing CIG can show at this years CitCon to iginite the hype (yet again) is an announcement of the release date for SQ42.

PS: I joined as a backer in 2016 and lived through the great content drought of 3.0. compared to that time we currently experience an unbelievable flood of many features that were promised years ago & its awesome to see everythig (SM most of all) coming together. Still, either CIG keeps the cadence going or gives the community a sq42 release date.