Rumors have been circulating that the big PC companies will be forming an industry consortium called the PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA). Well, the rumors have finally been confirmed and this organization has revealed itself at the GDC 2008. Intel's Randy Stude, the president and founding board member of the PC Gaming Alliance gave a statement regarding the organization's plans for the future. Read more about it in the full article.

NVIDIA, US based manufacturer of cutting edge graphic processing units (GPU), has recently came out with the GeForce 8800M GTX GPU. The 8800M is a revolutionary GPU that is geared for gaming grade notebooks and should set the standard for HD mobile gaming.

More details at the full article.

Alienware has announced that they have once again broken new ground with the shipment of the new Area-51 m9750 17-inch notebook.

The Area-51 m9750 is the first 17-inch notebook in the world that fuses the graphics capabilities of dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics cards with NVIDIA SLI technology and Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors. Other features of the Area-51 m9750 include the following:

• Lightning-quick frame rates and standout image quality with dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX 512MB graphics cards with NVIDIA SLI technology.
• Multitasking to the max, thanks to the latest Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors, which deliver 20 percent higher performance than previous-generation Intel Core Duo processors.
• The ability to store massive amounts of content, including games, TV programming, movies and music on dual hard drives packing up to 500GB of storage space.
• An abundance of multimedia features, including an ultra-sharp 17" widescreen display with Clearview technology, an integrated webcam and an integrated TV tuner with full DVR functionality.
• Vivid Blu-ray Disc movie playback using NVIDIA PureVideo™ HD technology for 6x the detail of standard DVD movies.

The Area-51 m9750 17-inch notebook is now available for prices starting at US$ 2,099 at the Alienware website.

Give us a moment here: it's been two decades since the "bread box", and this announcement that a company loyal to the Commodore in name and spirit will bring the magic back just caught us by surprise. Wait, that was an understatement. We swear time stopped for five minutes. Really.

Commodore 64: was that a classic or what? Avid gamers should remember this platform as the first gaming computer ever - the big daddy-O device that spurred the game industry. We know only some of us are classic gamers at heart (okay so maybe only the older ones).

But even well established game publishers honor the C64. Just ask Rockstar Games about the opening sequence for their game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Commodore Gaming will be bringing back the "Commodore" name and brand to the computer market, with gaming PCs that may rival those of Dell's AlienWare line and VoodooPC's luxury gaming sets. This move is tied to honoring the single best-selling PC in the history of the computer industry, even while Commodore Business Machines, the original company, is no longer around to witness this moment.

 

While details haven't been revealed as to what the new Commodore will be sporting, Bala Keilmann, CEO of Commodore Gaming, did promise "very exciting aspects" of the new systems to be unveiled at the next CeBIT coming this March 15.

The Commodore 64 sold 22 million units since it was released in 1982, putting it as the only computer model to reach that level of sales in history. But shortly after the modern Amiga 4000 and 1200 in 1992, the joint companies of Amiga and Commodore went belly up in 1994.

If they pull this the way we think they are going to, the term classic gaming is going to need a whole new definition.

Unreal Tournament can blast the vertigo offa you! Err, well, perhaps not in that way. People who suffer from vertigo (no, not the wall-mounted fireplace) - you know, like when your mouse develops a hiccup and spins your first-person shooter view like a merry-go-round from Hell - could be cured by subjecting the poor, motion-hallucinating folk to "virtual" scenarios.

By training their balance nerves to grab ahold of themselves, people will be able to get rid of the condition and join us "other" folks in a frantic game of Unreal Tournament.

A class from a virtual reality college visited a hospital where they found a research setup using VR as a tool. The research concentrated on studying people who suffered from vertigo or constant dizziness attacks. Using the Unreal engine and a US$ 3000 Alienware puppy, the medical researchers turned a whole Unreal Tournament level into a totally 3D grocery mart. A fraggin' good time at K-Mart? Yesiree!

How does it work? Well, the patient walks on a treadmill behind a stationary grocery cart. The treadmill is coupled with motion sensors, so a patient can walk around on their own free-will and go as fast as they want to go. By this "training" the patient's brain can get used to motions made and rewire their perception.

Pretty neat huh?

Thanks to this new entry to AlienWare's ALX series, gamers now have another piece of hardware to drool at. Don't believe us? Check out the pic below.

Called the Area-52 ALX, this ominous-looking heavy duty monster is powered by the mighty Intel Core 2 Extreme processor delivering quad core processing, NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX SLI graphics, the very latest in GPU technology, and highest capacity media courtesy of Blu-ray Disc Technology. It can also hold up to massive 3 terrabytes of storage. Yep, monster's the word.

The Area-51 delivers unrivaled performance thanks to four processing cores on a single die, letting users rip right through app loading times and ensure multimedia loading times are a thing of the past. Thanks to its dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX cards, the Area-51 is equipped with the very latest in HDCP ready dual GPU firepower, resulting in a total of 1.5GHz of dedicated GPU GDDR3 memory on the world’s first Direct X 10-compliant video card.

Price? Including VAT, it's EUR 3,254 (US$ 4,215). The Area-51 ALX is also available on AlienWare's AlienFinance packages. For more information, check out the Area-51 ALX product page at www.alienware.co.uk/area51alx.

Future, UK's leading publisher of games magazines and websites, and Intel, the chip-maker to the world, teamed up to promote the Core 2 Extreme processor range. The chip, part of the next-gen Core 2 Duo range, is designed specifically for high-powered gaming. According to Intel, the chip can deliver speeds up to 40% faster than its competitors.

According to the strategy, Future will push the the processors through its games magazines, websites, events, and special series of online gaming tournaments that will showcase the chip's power. Known as the Intel Extreme tournament and hosted by Future, the videogame duke fest starts November 5. Gamers who want to test drive the Core 2 Extreme processor via the tournament can register here.

Winners will receive prizes worth thousands of dollars including an Alienware Core 2 Extreme PC.

A few months back, we mentioned something about Phantom Entertainment's Phantom Lapboard. Just what in the world is it? The Lapboard integrates a wireless laser mouse and a wireless keyboard with programmable hotkeys, plugged into a platform which makes it desktop and laptop friendly. Plus, the keyboard can rotate left or right, so lefties and righties could find it a joy to use. This baby is blessed with an almost $130 price tag.

Phantom Entertainment, formerly known as Infinium Labs and creator of one of 2005's top vaporware, Phantom Console, is still unable to shake off their dubious image. But it seems that the Sun is shining a bit on the company nowadays. Why is that? Apparently, Dell-owned Alienware has placed orders for the Phantom Lapboard which will be used for their Media Center PCs and PC gear product line.

According to Alienware Senior VP Frank Azor, "implementing the Phantom Wireless Lapboard as part of our Media Center solutions is an important extension of these key features, providing users with a convenient, flexible way to both work and have fun without being tied to a desk." As to how many Lapboards were ordered by Alienware, well, nobody knows. Your guesses are as good as ours.

Hopefully, the beleaguered company could fully take advantage of this opportunity. They should know that they are given something that most banged-up companies could only wish for, and that is a second chance.