Dell fights Alien Invasion

Asakawa writes "With manufacturers like Alienware and Voodoo sucking up the low-volume/high-margin high-end gaming market, it looks like Dell wants a piece of the action. The machine that these guys have reviewed looks pretty awesome, but they reckon it's overpriced. It will be interesting to see if Dell can shake off its grey box image and entice the more fussy gamers and enthusias."

Comments

Clones

[LordHatrus]

It's just not the same if its not a clone. The only good gaming rig is pimped out, with glowing-thingimabobers and cooling fit for space shuttle components on re-entry.

Too little, too late

[Three Headed Man]

Dell has too much work ahead of them for this really to be a feasible switch. Further, this isn't really that large of a market. I'll be surprised if they've got that much to gain by controlling another market.

Their market is the uninformed.

[sglider]

Unfortunately for Dell, the market for the gamer revolves around the potential for business from the uninformed gamer. Every gamer I know (and indeed, myself) builds their own system for the fraction of the cost of buying an Alienware or a Dell that has the same specs. Indeed, as often as hardcore gamers upgrade their systems, none of these manufacturers can hope to provide the kind of support I'd need to make it worth my while. Perhaps if they offered free hardware upgrades for two years, I could see spending an extra 500-1500 dollars for the same exact system that I could build by surfing Pricewatch.com.

Oh come on

[caitsith01]

How many people seriously play games over this res?

For one thing, computers that can play Doom III and the like at higher than 1280x1024 are not expected to exist until sometime in the 24th century.

For another, there are several things that make serious gaming waaay more enjoyable than straight-out resolution, including graphics card quality settings and refresh rate. Most decent monitors will still start to lose refresh rate above 1024x768... if you want anything close to 85-100Hz at higher than 1280x1024 you are talking about insanely expensive equipement.

IMHO most modern games are best played at 1024x768 on a decent gaming rig. You get beautifully high frame rates, and with a decent video card you can have all the quality settings absolutely cranked, whilst running at 100Hz or higher on your monitor to go extra easy on the eyes.

Anyone who claims they 'need' much higher resolutions is full of it.

Re:Gamers want...

[gnu-generation-one]

"It will be interesting to see if Dell can shake off it's grey box image and entice the more fussy gamers and enthusiasts."

I think Dell's reputation is for black boxes, and they've shaken that off by making this one blue... ;-)

From the review: "The power button sits impressively in the top right hand corner and moodily glows yellow when switched on."

Okay, very nice. Looks exactly like a normal dell case to me, complete with the silly front-panel door that always falls off, the interior layout set in stone, with the assumption that nothing will ever be replaced inside, and the 2-man-lift bulk of a computer so large it doesn't fit in any normal location. I never noticed how 'moody' the power lights were before though. Presumably I should be downright spooked by seeing 20 of them illuminating us at work.

It's an interesting review, with no mention of anything important. Do we really care how smart and silvery the Dell logo is, when the technical aspect of this review is limited to mentioning the CPU speed, and the name of the graphics card?

Doin' It On The Cheap

[blueZhift]

It looks like Dell is simply trying to offer up a games oriented PC on the cheap without upsetting their system too much. This would be sort of like building sports cars on the same assembly line as compact economy cars. The sports cars would get a different body and a few performance tweaks, but would essentially be the same old economy cars underneath with a significantly higher price. This sort of thing would garner some casual driving enthusiasts, but the hardcore enthusiasts who actually look carefully under the covers, would not be fooled by this.

It isn't really clear who they plan to sell XPS systems to. The hardcore market, as others here have commented, would likely build their own machines with higher performance for the same or less cost than the XPS. That leaves what I'll call the Mom and Pop market buying computers for their kids. This market might buy the XPS, but would be scared off by such a pricey machine that would probably be used to play games rather than doing homework. The kids would have to push them to buy this, and well, Dell just isn't cool right now (Apple is!). So I guess Dell needs to bring back that stoner dude to rev up those back to school sales!