One of Dell's official blogs provides a bit of clarity as to the discombobulation of the XPS gaming line in favour of Alienware. Basically, the XPS and Alienware development teams are being fused together, and XPS is going to go in a more high-end consumer direction ("XPS isn't going away, though it may go in new directions as hinted by the XPS One and the slimline XPS m1330") while Alienware totally subsumes Dell's gaming side, becoming "a fantastic global brand that sets benchmarks for gaming." In other words...

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The last place I would expect to hear even a glimmer of doubt about the performance potential of gaming PCs would be Alienware. Yet Alienware's Marc Diana spills that 32-bit machines just aren't cutting it at the pure performance level anymore, saying that faster chips with more cores aren't the solution: 64-bit systems are the real fire. He castigates the rest of the industry for not stepping up, noting that Alienware doesn't actually offer 64-bit systems because driver support sucks, at best.

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Contrary to a report in the Wall Street Journal this week, Dell has no plans to drown its XPS line in the bathtub. It was reported that Dell was going to kill off the line in order to help boost sales of its Alienware line, as both are high-end systems aimed at gamers. XPS systems will stick around for people who don't want to go crazy specing out their PCs, while Alienware will focus on the richest and most anal of the nerds, people who are willing to pay big money to tweak every aspect for their system. Good plan? Whatever, PC gaming is dying anyways. Sorry guys, hate to break it to you, but it's true. Don't shoot the messenger. [Register Hardware]

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Dell is killing its four big balls XPS gaming machines (not the entire XPS line, like the standard notebooks, which are selling really well) to focus all of its juice on Alienware as its sole gaming brand. The timeline isn't overly specific, but the clock is ticking for Dell's XPS WoW notebook and their car-sized (and priced) 730 tower. We actually sorta figured this was coming.

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Alienware's latest community effort is AlienNetwork, a "digital channel" which debuted today. To kick off the show with a bang, they revealed that their "fastest ever" 17-inch Area-51 m17x gaming notebook shown back in November is launching today at 5PM (right now, give or take). Versus the m15x, it's got a higher res 1920x1200 screen, NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX SLI graphic cards, up to a Core 2 Extreme CPU and the option for two hard drives set up in RAID. It's in all black and if we might say so, just a bit sexier than the m15x. Update: Here's the product page.

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Alienware has injected life into the Aurora line with a new gaming rig fitted with quad-core AMD Phenom 9850 processors, your choice of ATI Radeon 3870 X2, HD3850, or HD3870 graphics cards (single or CrossFire configuration), up to 4GB Dual Channel DDR2, and tons of HDD space. Naturally, tricking this thing out with all of the higher-end options is going to make the price ridiculous in a hurry, but a US$999 base is about as good as it will get for an Alienware. [Alienware via PC Mag]

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While the rumour that Dell's working on an Android phone isn't new—it was sorta smashed, even—this is a slightly different (and maybe more promising) spin on it. An Alienware-designed Android phone. I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of sense, or hell, even looks that good, but it's definitely more striking than anything Dell would probably come up with. Would you carry this thing, especially with the much-improved look of the new Android SDK? [Dialaphone via /.]

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Reader Peter has pointed out that Alienware's local online store is finally back in business, after months of being MIA since they were abducted by Dell. No idea what happened, but the store is now offering the new Area 51 notebooks and desktops, and show a HD Living Room product coming soon. If you're into Alienware's kit, this is a happy day for you.

While we're supposed to be mesmerised by the Alienware m15x's impressive-for-a-15-incher specs—Intel Core 2 Extreme, NVIDIA Geforce 8800M GTX and hot-swappable dual hard drives—we're kind of more tranced out by its over-the-top LED glow. It's available today, months after first being teased—a bit more hype than necessary for a gaming notebook. The Core 2 Extreme config starts at $US3,350, so bring plenty of your earth monies. Press release:

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The sighting: We can't have one of these Alienware curved monitors until the second half of this year, but until then, we've been abducted by its four nearly seamless and sharp screens of DLP goodness. Lit by LEDs, this 2880x900 monster is well over three feet wide and is said to have an other-worldly .02ms response time, great for gaming. The Soylent Green: You can see the seams between this monitor's four segments, but the Alienware humanoids tell us that flaw will be gone by the time this craft lands on Earth. The blacks look a bit washed out to our eyes, too. Price is yet to be determined.