Have you ever taken a look at common MOBA and MMO-oriented mice and thought "that cluster of buttons looks like an unmanageable mess?" Well, Steelseries was probably thinking along the same lines of late. The company has tackled that problem with its Rival 500 mouse, which joins ranks with the Rival 700 and Rival 100.
The Rival 500 is a 15-button, right-handed gaming mouse clad with a matte surface. So far, so yesterday, but the mouse's uniqueness stems from the design of its thumb button cluster. Steelseries says it "designed [the Rival 500] from the ground up around the gamer's thumb and hand movements," and came up with the ergonomic button layout you can see in the photos.
As an added touch, two of the buttons in the thumb zone are what Steelseries calls "flick-down." Those clickers are activated with a downward movement of the player's opposable digit. That's not the last trick in the Rival 500's playbook, too—the palm area has a haptic feedback motor for giving players information about game events like ability cooldown times or ammo counts.
On the underside of the rodent, there's a Pixart 3360 sensor capable of reading surfaces at up to 16,000 DPI and tracking under acceleration up to 50 g. The mouse's nameplate is also replaceable, and Steelseries offers 3D schematic files to help users create their own designs. Steelseries has the Rival 500 up for preorder on its website for $80 in the U.S. and 90€ in Europe.