Q&A Session with ASUS at CES 2016: 10 Years of the Republic of Gamers
by Ian Cutress on December 18, 2015 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Interview
- Asus
- ROG
- Trade Shows
- CES 2016
As part of our coverage of CES 2016 a few short weeks away, we have teamed up with ASUS for a round-table into their Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand, which is celebrating its 10-year birthday throughout 2016. In the round table, we will be discussing the origins of ROG, with some insight into those first initial products and to how the brand is perceived today, with a few questions from our readers. This is where you come in!
As part of the discussion, we have synchronized a very interesting group of individuals, including all the motherboard senior editors of AnandTech dating back well over a decade:
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| Vivian Lien Kralevich Chief Marketing Officer, ASUS USA ASUS Marketing from 2006/2007 |
Gary Key Director of Marketing, ASUS USA AnandTech Motherboard Senior Editor 2005-2008 |
Rajinder 'Raja' Gill Technical PR Manager, ASUS USA AnandTech Motherboard Senior Editor 2008-2010 |
Ian Cutress 10 Years of ROG Round Table Chair Current AnandTech Motherboard Senior Editor from 2011 |
Between Gary, Rajinder and myself, we have covered the Republic of Gamers brand from its inception, with both Gary and Raja now involved in various levels with members of the team that designs, develops, tests and pushes the ROG ecosystem, then managing the perception of it as part of the ASUS brand within North America. At the time when Gary was probing the original models, Vivian was one of his direct ASUS contacts, ensuring that direct line of communication and filling him in on the details. Then when Gary joined ASUS, Raja had Gary as his main contact, and so on, meaning that for this discussion we have the ASUS-AnandTech contact line right from the initial ROG launch.
You may remember we interviewed Dr Albert Chang, Senior Division Director of ASUS Motherboard Business Unit Research and Development back in 2014 about the general path for motherboard design, and how the ROG team is designed to be that skunkworks element of engineering. Raja assists ROG’s internal impromptu extreme overclocking events with top overclockers as well as community management, so we will pick his brains on how design ideas from the forums and events assist product design. With any luck, we will also have some old ROG boxes or hardware on hand through to the newest Maximus line.
This round-table and Q&A session will be video recorded then uploaded after CES, and we invite questions from you. Please leave them in the comments below!
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mrdude - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link
This is more of a comment than a question, but I feel it needs to be said nevertheless --Adding RGB LEDs on peripherals doesn't an interesting nor tempting product make.
That's all. Thanks :)
dsumanik - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
well, judging by all these comments the purch buyout has done real harm to the readership here. People are sick of the bs, Ian seriously u guys are advertising *cough* I mean reviewing *cough* quad sli motherboards and not even bothering to test. The readers around here could provide better reviews, straight up.jjj - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link
Sadly ROG is just empty marketing and you shouldn't endorse such tactics.So the question is why should someone charge an extra 30-50% for no reason at all and do they sleep at night knowing that they ripped off some child that cares about the branding? Also what's their marketing budget and what's their R&D budget,lets see if they dare to answer that one lol.
Now if it was a conversation with Asus and someone that did something relevant, one could ask about glasses, xpoint,, why they are making overpriced dumbwatch clones, why are they selling out to Intel in mobile while at the same time Intel is killing Asus mobo sales with their desktop line) or why haven't they made a tablet halfway decent since 2013. And then there is 3D printing and robots and IoT without BS services and plenty of topics. Or why do they use a 1TB HDD instead of 256GB SSD in notebooks today.
They made the first netbook, the first relevant convertible, how about the first decent phone or tab with foldable screen or the first decent watch for that matter.
7amood - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
Do you have future plans to do motherboard water proofing to protect it from water cooling leaks using Oleophobic coating or similar stuff?7amood - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
Do you have future plans to do motherboard water proofing to protect it from water cooling leaks using Oleophobic coating or similar stuff?Shadow7037932 - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
You mean conformal coating that has been used on industrial PCs/electronics for ages?jasonelmore - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
Can you please improve Asus Support Forums servers so they aren't so slow.Can you please not make Extreme Motherboard for "Mainstream Chipsets" not so expensive ($500 for recent Maximus VIII Extreme w/o PLX chip) $500 motherboards should be reserved for enthusiast chipset ex: X99 My Maximus VI was $359 new and even had a PLX chip + OC Panel + 4 way SLI + Wireless. You could make a seperate Breakout board sold separately with all the expensive LN2 Features.
Please start including USB 3.1 Front Panel Headers for the next generation of cases
Put more U.2 Ports on your motherboard line once U.2 gains steam regarding more drives on the market
Make all LED lighting with Custom on/off states so the user can turn some off if they don't want it.
Make a ROG motherboard line with custom color inserts for PCIE, Chipset, Heatsink, so people can customize their own color scheme and just order the optional color packages they want to fit their build.
Start putting a USB Type C port (space savings) vs Type A inside on the motherboard for secure boot or Bitlocker USB Keys, or Custom Boot ROM's such as NAS software, Linux, etc..
Regarding jjj's comment, ROG boards typically use higher end Caps, Conductors, PWM's and Power Delivery Systems. Additionally, These motherboards get updates for years. I am still getting bios updates for my 3 year old Maximus VI. Do not be rude to guest in interviews at anandtech. word your questions and intent better, and keep your personal opinion to a minimum.
Michael Bay - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
Did you expect something else from AMD zombie, really?lagittaja - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
Regarding that comment about "these motherboards get updates for years".Uhm, no. With Maximus IV Gene-Z they dropped support before warranty even ended.
Released around mid March 2011 iirc, last BIOS update end of November 2012. About 18 months.
Same story for the Gene-Z/GEN3 but it's support lasted even shorter amount of time, barely a year.
No official Win 8 support despite Win 8 went RTM 1st August 2012. General availability for it was end of October. So no secure boot and so on. Asrock has been giving Z68 boards BIOS's to enable the secure boot..
I thought I bought a premium board, well I did but the support was so short lived.
No more ROG for me. I'll look at other motherboards when I upgrade at somepoint.
svan1971 - Saturday, December 19, 2015 - link
simple question, why don't ROG Z170 boards have dual M.2 ultra ports?