Why Dell Is Good For PC Gaming
So after getting home from on of my regularly scheduled week-long business trips, one of the first things I do (after properly greeting the wife and spawn of course) is sit down at my desk and dig through the mountain of mail that awaits me.
Like anyone these days, I'm perpetually fighting the ugly horde known as
junkmail, both in my email inbox as well as in my physical mailbox. Most of it is crap like unsolicited credit card applications, mailers for buying timeshare property, and special discounts on having a screened in porch added onto the back of my house (wtf?).
Yet every now and then I stumble across something that makes me instantly realize one thing or another...and when I saw that sexy, full color, glossy Dell mailer that was specifically dedicated to PC gaming and PC enthusiast-level laptops and tower systems. Suddenly, a dull light bulb flickered in my belfry.
"Damn", I said to myself, "Dell is actually a good thing for PC gaming." And here's why...
Dell had the foresight not so long ago to create
the XPS division, which focused not only on hardcore gamers, but with PC enthusiasts in general. Their offerings cover hardcore gamers with tower systems, oversized (and overpowered!) laptops, as well as a few stealthy, but reasonably juiced up sub-notebooks.
Dell saw the enthusiast market split up into a few
somewhat organized organizations that did what would be considered unthinkable to the stodgy old Dell. These boutique shops put price at the bottom of the list, yet placed performance and style at the top...and it worked for them.
So not only did Dell continue to put resources into building their own XPS division to be a well-respected and praised solution for hardcore gamers, but they dropped
a rumored $300 million bones for Alienware, the undeniable leader in high performance PC's and laptops. Today, Alienware operates as a wholely-owned subsidiary of Dell, where the same guys who started the company, still run it today...just now they have the buying power of one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world.
To further prove how good of a move this was for Dell, and how much all of the big names in PC manufacturing looked highly upon the boutique PC business model, Hewlett-Packard quickly followed with
their outright purchase of Voodoo PC, a Canadian boutique builder known for extremely beautiful finishes and artwork on their products.
Dell has a huge market share of the PC world, not the biggest (HP owns that honor right now if memory serves me correctly), but they have enough of the market that what they do,
or do not do, resounds loudly throughout the industry. They have taken some big steps the last few years to help their company not only get into the enthusiast PC market segment, but help grow it with their loud and proud media blitzing of said sect of their company.
Dell obviously realized long ago, that the single-digit gross profits from their home and enterprise businesses would need some kind of offsetting force, to not only show a reasonably respectable bottom line to Wall Street, but to help them continue to grow as a business. And in business, if you ain't growing, you're dying...it's that simple.
So with that said, it was incumbent upon Dell to find various ways to stimulate their organizational outputs, and PC gaming is not such a bad avenue it seems. Gamers are willing to pay more for performance and cutting edge technologies, and they are also willing to upgrade much sooner than, say,
your aunt Myrtle who only needed a
'Pee Cee' for emailing the grandkids, checking the AARP website's latest obituaries, and cruising Craigslist for male prostitutes...that's the rumor anyway.
So Dell started out all those years ago as a simple mail-order, low-end PC manufacturer that leveraged their streamlined order fulfillment and manufacturing processes into one of the largest names in recent industrial history. They pretty much gave away the high end business to anyone crazy enough to invest in that inventory and deal with that (let's face it) insanely passionate customer.
But oh, how times have changed. Now they're one of the foremost proponents of not only keeping PC gaming alive, but for cross-marketing their products with some of the largest names in PC gaming to further get out the message that PC gaming is not only alive and kicking, but pretty damn fun if you've got the right rig.
Eerily enough, we enthusiasts kicked Dell in the cyber-sack at any given opportunity in years past, but now we have to own up to the fact that not only is Dell good for PC gaming, they may be one of the last big dogs in the race against the gaming console's dominance in gaming today.
Holy shit...
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