Dell Drops XPS Gaming Line in Favor of Alienware

Well as the title says, Dell will be dropping it’s high-end gaming systems branded under XPS and letting it’s Alienware division handle these systems. It’s about time. I often wondered why the heck they continued to produce their own XPS gaming systems and competed with themselves (Alienware). I figured the whole point of buying Alienware was to increase penetration into the PC gaming market and also to buy the strong brand equity that Alienware has in that market. But they kept producing new XPS gaming systems which didn’t make much sense.

Apparently Dell does quite well in the PC gaming market with its XPS gaming systems so you have to question whether they actually needed to acquire Alienware. But what’s done is done anyway. Along with the announcement was that Alienware is coming out with ‘low-cost gaming systems’ which is almost an oxymoron. Gaming PC’s need to be high end so they can handle the latest games. A cheaper gaming PC is really just like any other standard PC you buy. In this case, it’s just branded under Alienware so you think it’ll work great for your games.

It reeks a little of the Vista Capable debacle. People got tricked into thinking Vista Compatible meant the PC they were buying would work fine with Vista, but features are scaled back and performance is mediocre. Hence the lawsuit. It’s kind of the same in this case. You buy a relatively cheaper gaming PC from Alienware (I say relatively cheaper because gaming PC’s typically cost more and have higher premiums) and think that you can run Crysis on high settings. That’s just not going to be the case.

Personally, I would never buy a prebuilt PC ever again. After I built my first PC, it was clear to me that custom self-built PC’s are the way to go. You cut out a huge profit margin PC makers add on to price of the hardware. And prebuilt PC’s like Dell and Alienware use proprietary components making it hard to swap out or upgrade certain components.

New Update

Apparently Dell has stated they are not dropping the XPS gaming line, contrary to what was reported in the WSJ. Oh well. Their XPS gaming line and Alienware are in the same market. I still don’t think this strategy makes sense.