Turtle Beach Acquires ROCCAT: a New Gaming Peripherals Giant Is Born
by Anton Shilov on March 15, 2019 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Peripherals
- Keyboard
- Headset
- ROCCAT
- Mice
- Turtle Beach
Turtle Beach, a leading supplier of headsets and a developer of various audio technologies, this week signed an agreement to acquire ROCCAT, a maker of gaming peripherals. The move creates a new combined supplier of gaming peripherals with presence all around the world.
At present Turtle Beach is primarily known in the US and some European countries for its gaming headsets for consoles and PCs. By taking over ROCCAT, the company gets keyboards, mice, and a variety of accessories for gamers. Turtle Beach estimates that the merged company will have a total of 48 core product models for various markets. Furthermore, Turtle Beach gains presence in Asia and additional European countries, where ROCCAT is known. To a large degree, Turtle Beach and ROCCAT have no obvious overlap in terms of product portfolio and in terms of distribution channels, allowing them to integrate better. It's not clear if ROCCAT hardware will be rebranded Turtle Beach, or if the ROCCAT brand will remain.
René Korte, the head of ROCCAT, and other employees of the company, will join Turtle Beach and will continue to design peripherals.
Under the terms of the agreement, Turtle Beach will acquire ROCCAT for $14.8 million in cash (net of a working capital adjustment), $1 million in cash or stock (company option), and up to approximately $3.4 million in earnout payments. Turtle Beach expects ROCCAT to contribute about $20 - $24 million to its 2019 revenue as well as over $30 million to its 2020 revenue.
Sales of Turtle Beach totaled $287.4 million in 2018, whereas it net income was $39.2 million. The lion’s share of the company’s revenue was contributed by headsets for game consoles sold in North America, a market where Turtle Beach commanded a ~40% share for the past nine years. Meanwhile, Turtle Beach plans to increase sales of its PC gaming accessories to $100 million in the coming years, so the acquisition of ROCCAT is strategically important for the company.
Related Reading
- Turtle Beach Demos HyperSound Glass: Transparent Speakers Made of Glass
- ROCCAT Unveils Vulcan Mechanical Keyboard: Titan Switch, AIMO Lighting
- ROCCAT Integrates Keyboard and Smartphone: The Skeltr
- ROCCAT Announces the Nyth Semi-Modular Mouse
Source: Turtle Beach
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
16 Comments
View All Comments
Dragonstongue - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
I just gonna say IMOcool, might as well have similar "quality" vendors buy each other, this way here consumers will generally know whom to avoid.
Turtle Beach have had some really nice things over the years no doubt about that, quality and seemingly first choice to use not the greatest plastics etc etc, sorry but I do not buy their stuff, too many +/- opinion of them overall says to ME there are better choices out there.
Roccat I personally consider something like a Steel Series, Razer or a Cooler Master type company where they seemed to have started out on the right foot, asking for a bit more ASP but also delivering more final quality product, but just like so many (like above especially CM) they take "so so" and slap a higher price on it, in some cases "rebrand" (however you want to word it) with few if any changes but higher price.
IMO Logitech is as "simple" as a mouse, keyboard or whatever vendor as a "base level" if other makers cannot be better at this minimum level they are not worth my $.
anywho, let them all team up, maybe less competition, but this might also mean some of the crazy outlandish designs as of late ( disco light show RGB madness) can become more "focused" lines from few vendors instead of a whole metric #$% load all competing with this crud load like if they do not use up all them god awful designs now the world will end.
It will not ^.^
Lolimaster - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link
C'mon, I wan't my RGB on the right/left button clicks cause it's more premium bro.stanleyipkiss - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
I don't know about perceived quality versus actual quality.I have two Roccat mice. The one I used most, a Kone XTD has degraded so bad (palm grip, side finger rest) it's hard to hold. This has never happened on the 3 or 4 Logitech mice I had before. I wanted something new so I went with Roccat since Logitech had a serious QA issue (double-click issue) with a mouse that I payed over $200 for and they refused to service it. However, I find myself yet again having to find another brand for peripherals.
PeachNCream - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
The last time I can remember hearing about Turtle Beach, they were selling Montego sound cards. I didn't even know the company still existed, much less had the capital on hand to buy another company regardless of size.KateH - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
came here to say the same thing! Turtle Beach sound cards were a hot name back when sound cards were something that builders had to think abouthescominsoon - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
in the days of highly compressed, barely tolerable quality audio many settle for the onboard win audio. I actually do run discreet audio cards in every system i build. So far my favorite has been the Asus(oxygen based) cards. Creative for a while went totally stagnant..but they have finally started waking up as well. The xonar cards are currently my favorites.Flunk - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
Most sound cards test worse than onboard audio now. You're better off using an external DAC because it moves the DAC outside of the electrically noisy computer case.The Xonar cards as an example are just the same components used in an onboard audio system on a card. Consumer sound cards peaked with the Creative X-Fi and the industry game up after Microsoft standardized the audio stack for Windows Vista and locked out 3rd party hardware enhancements.
WhoSamHughes - Monday, March 18, 2019 - link
Do you have links for add-on audio processors testing worse than integrated audio processors?Murloc - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
people who have decent speakers usually have an external AVR anyway so audio cards don't really matter.Valantar - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
I've worked in stores that have sold both Roccat and Turtle Beach gear. Roccat had some nice mice (though not entirely to my tastes, still not bad), but their keyboards were... meh. As for Turtle Beach, the combination of cheap plastics, poor audio quality and terrible ergonomics made me quite good at selling anything but their products to interested customers.