As Alienware turns 20, the line between PCs and game consoles blurs

Alienware was founded 20 years ago to make gaming PCs. And at the most recent Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), it showed off a bunch of new products such as the Alienware Alpha desktop, the full-tower Area 51, the OLED-based Alienware 13, and a backpack and computer that enables players to wear a PC on their back while they play virtual reality games.

Those machines offer screaming performance to players who want exceptional graphics quality. But now the PC is changing, as Microsoft is trying to drive Windows 10 and Xbox gaming and its Project Scorpio game console (coming in holiday 2017) into a kind of converged product.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.