Ed Moltzen

The Chart

May 14, 2008

As many people with an 11-year old son or daughter can tell you, finding the best "cheats" on different PC or console games can mean the difference between Level 1 or jumping to Level 68 (whatever Level 68 means.)

But for PC companies looking to jump from one level to another in gaming profitability, there are no hidden cheats. None yet, anyway. The marketplace, if not the world, is watching.

Dell is one company that has put significant time into figuring out a gaming strategy and earlier this week decided to pull back some on its XPS-branded lineup to put more emphasis on its Alienware line. There was a hue and cry and some speculation that Dell might be backing away a little from the space. Not so, says Dell's Anne Camden, in a post on a Dell blog:

Dell XPS and Alienware are both great brands " arguably the greatest brands in PC gaming " and both will live on. But we are going to expand our focus on Alienware. We are going to invest like crazy in product development, design and engineering to propel Alienware as the premier gaming brand in the future. We are integrating the best gaming product development, engineering and design teams in the industry — Alienware and XPS — and this all-star lineup will be supported by a worldwide sales and marketing organization.

It's not just Dell that's going big after the gaming space. Rival HP has been investing in its Voodoo PC lineup. Velocity Micro has been aggressive in delivering more and better high-end gaming systems. And anecdotal evidence is telling us that a growing number of system builders have begun taking at least a cursory look at how they can leverage their expertise and scale to begin offering gaming systems to some customers eager to spend money for the best performance, graphics, overclocking and edge they can get.

But while PC gaming might give the public a license to steal virtual cars, it doesn't give anyone a license to print money. Consider gaming vendor Electronic Arts, which posted a loss for its most recent quarter and which has been spinning its tires trying to acquire Take-Two Interactive, the company that owns the monster title Grand Theft Auto IV. EA produces games for Xbox, Wii and Playstation platforms, and saw big revenue increases there; but EA saw a 28 percent drop in its PC gaming business in its most recent quarter compared to the year before.

Perhaps if companies like Dell really do "invest like crazy" in the PC as a gaming platform, they can give it a boost against the console platforms. The coming months will tell if they are ready to get to the next level the hard way.