Ever since Dell bought Alienware in 2006, business for the extra-terrestrial company has declined. Once the posterchild for high-end, expensive gaming systems, Alienware’s fall from prominence has provided a nice boost in the business of smaller system integrators offering similar if not higher-quality products for better prices. Analysts supposed that this decrease in business was the result of competition with Dell’s own XPS line, which was heavily revamped shortly after the Alienware purchase.

Now news comes in that Dell will be dropping the high-end portion of its XPS lineup and will use the Alienware name for its upper-echelon systems. This new structure is very similar to the setup that Hewlitt Packard (HP) currently has with VoodooPC. HP’s high-end gaming systems are mostly in the form of Voodoo’s Blackbird gaming system. Voodoo systems still exist simultaneously with the Blackbird, both systems are manufactured by the same group with HP. Dell’s counterpart for this group is its gaming PC division, which will be headed by Arthur Lewis, a vice president of Alienware when the purchase took place. To add another similarity to the HP/Voodoo relationship, Alienware will be working to revise the look/manufacture of their system chassis in order to provide a fresh image (a la blackbird).

Another interesting bit of news is that Alienware will continue with the Dell XPS tradition of offering slightly-less-expensive systems with alternative components in order to reach a wider audience. For this SKU, Alienware will be using AMD/ATI parts in the form of the Phenom X4 and Radeon HD3870 X2.

We will have to wait and see how this transition will effect the major gaming organizations that are currently sponsored by and have a lot of systems provided by Dell’s XPS line. Will CGS competitions start to use new Alienware systems or will they continue to use the already-capable Dell XPS systems they already have?

Source: DailyTech through Wall Street Journal

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