Razer is pretty well known in gaming circles—particularly in PC gaming circles—for offering up some really top-notch peripherals as well as even some impressive gaming platforms outright. But the company known for its keyboard, mice, and similar such matters now has a new reason to pay attention to it in the form of Gideon Yu, who has recently joined Razer's board.

Yu was brought in, according to reports, to provide experience and insight in both high tech and financial management. This is particularly handy as Yu is co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers and was a general partner with Khosla Ventures, as well as chief financial officer for YouTube and Facebook, as well as senior vice president of finance at Yahoo. That's an impressive body of work by any standard, but for a company that was looking for high tech and financial advice, it probably doesn't get much better than Yu, who has both of those things and in substantial number.

Razer is a terrific company, but it's always been a little on the smallish side. It's not much seen or heard of outside of its work with gaming peripherals, and even then, it's mostly just PC gaming. I've often wondered why Razer doesn't apply its brand of design prowess to console gaming hardware—a headset, or even a controller—to really ratchet up the proceedings. But with Gideon Yu involved, it might well be that this is about to change. After all, Gideon Yu is a pretty major name on several fronts, so putting him in the mix may well prove a catalyst that drives Razer right into the next level. Maybe Razer has some expansion plans in mind; we've already seen what it can do with hardware, maybe it's considering a move into software. Kind of a crazy idea, maybe, but we've seen that content is increasingly becoming king, and for Razer to start making games that are optimized to run on Razer hardware might well be an interesting move. It could be, conversely, looking into online video; online video is becoming, increasingly, a complementary good alongside gaming, and Razer is already in one complementary market with gaming as it is. Going into a second one isn't exactly a stretch, and since Yu has experience with YouTube, that could be a proposition as well.

Only time will tell, naturally, just which route all this ends up going. But Gideon Yu's involvement with Razer could well be a game-changer that turns a company already well-known for its hardware into something much more than it currently is.