Turtle Beach acquires Roccat in £11.2m deal

Audio specialist Turtle Beach has announced it is again attempting to branch out into gaming peripherals, acquiring Roccat in an £11.2 million all-cash deal.

Turtle Beach has had its eye on the gaming market for some time: As well as its gaming-focused headsets, including the Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth 450, the company announced it was to launch a family of keyboards and mice which landed in May 2015 with the Impact 700 and Grip 500. Neither range, however, set the market alight, and following poor reviews the company abandoned its plans to launch any follow-up devices.

Four years on Turtle Beach has decided to have another crack at breaking into a market measured at £2.2 billion annually. This time, though, it's splashing the cash to get a little help, acquiring peripherals specialist Roccat instead of trying to go it alone.

'This is a dynamic and strategically important deal for Turtle Beach,' claims Juergen Stark, company chief executive. 'We are adding a complementary portfolio of PC gaming mice and keyboards, a skilled PC accessories team, and a highly synergistic distribution footprint. The acquisition is also a key step in achieving our goal of building a $100 million PC gaming accessories business in the coming years. Roccat accelerates our expansion into the roughly $1.6 billion PC gaming headset market, as well as directly enables us to address the roughly $1.3 billion PC gaming keyboard and mice market. We believe our combined product portfolio is one of the strongest in the industry, covering gaming headsets for consoles and PC's, gaming keyboards and mice. Together we will have 48 core product models to pursue the total addressable market of over $4.7 billion in North America, Europe and Asia.

'We are thrilled to welcome René Korte and the Roccat team to the Turtle Beach family, as they are a highly talented group with deep experience in PC accessories and have a similar focus on providing high quality, innovative products to gamers worldwide.'

'We've long admired how Turtle Beach's pioneering headsets have elevated gaming and it is an honour to join forces and bring our great products to more gamers,' Roccat chief executive Korte adds. 'I have no doubt that combining Roccat's strength in the PC peripherals market with Turtle Beach's 45 years of experience, impressive technology, console dominance, and strong brand will bring even more victories to gamers around the world.'

Neither company has stated whether the acquisition will result in layoffs as the two enterprises are combined.