• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 10:30 AM

Dell is abandoning several of its most popular gaming personal computers to focus on what it sees as its premium line called Alienware. The strategy is part of Dell's broader turnaround effort. Gaming PCs are a niche market, but tend to shape PC design trends and influence mainstream buyers.

Next month, Dell will begin phasing out four gaming systems in its XPS line of PCs, leaving the Alienware line that it acquired in 2006 as its sole offering to big-spending gamers, a largely male group predominantly 18 to 34 years old.

It is an overdue but risky move. Alienware has "lost some mojo," says Ted Pollak, a gaming analyst at Jon Peddie Research. But Arthur Lewis, the recently named head of Dell's gaming-PC division, says the brand remains a "premier" name in the market. The consolidation allows Dell to put its marketing might under a single name, he says.

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