XPS brand abducted by Aliens

TINMAN Dell has killed off its XPS range of desktop gaming machines.

The Texans picked up east-coast mavericks Alienware in 2006 in a bid to broaden its customer base to include hardcore gamers and super-high-cost purchasers. However, the purchase bizarrely seemed to spark a new inspiration of creativity in Dell's own labs and the folks there released the XPS 730 and its consequent variants - a gaming PC that performed better and was better thought-out than its extra-terrestrial cousins.

Indeed, the XPS 7xx series has been at the top of many gamer's shopping lists with Alienware looking ever more expensive and ever less innovative. Bizarrely, Dell only released the latest upgrade to the XPS last week, prompting concerns that the left mouse button isn't talking to the right.

Alienware already had enough on its plate competing with brands such as Hewlett-Packard's Vodoo PC line and Falcon Northwest without having to bash its own parent company, too.

The move comes as Alienware is expected to bring out redesigned systems based on new materials - as yet unseen by hardware hacks.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news this morning, although you'll need a sub to read the whole thing. The Journal claims that the move is to boost flagging gaming PC sales, and Dell has said that its Alienware lines are more important than XPS sales.

PC builders like gaming PCs since they can cost as little as $1,000, but typically range from $2,000 to $5,000 and feature high-end (high-margin) Intel and AMD quad-core processors and graphics chips from Graphzilla and DAAMIT.

Will Dull simply ship its best tech bods over to Alienware, or is there something comprehensive in the works? We are endeavouring to ferret around and find out. µ