“Quite honestly when we started off, our priorities were performance. And that was our key differentiator at the time,” that’s Alienware co-founder Frank Azor and current General Manager of Alienware and Dell Gaming talking about the beginnings of the now decades long history of the Alienware brand. Which in the fast-paced world of technology is essentially a lifetime. Where, during those early days the concept of a high-end PC built for gaming was all but non-existent. But now, 22-years after its humble beginnings building PCs that could play the latest games, Alienware remains the leader in high-end gaming hardware. And not by coincidence either, the reported $3 billion in business revenue for the past twelve months* that make up Alienware and Dell Gaming high-end hardware is born from a history of striving for excellence.


“As performance has been democratised, almost everybody has access to high-grade gaming components,” Frank continues, bringing the conversation up to today. “As Esports has become what it is, the sensitivity around quality has drastically risen. Customers and gamers and Esport athletes have either tried some gaming products, and been dissatisfied with them, or they know that in training or in competition their machine can mean the difference between walking away with nothing, or walking away with hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars. There's no sport, outside of automobile or vehicle racing, where the athlete's dependency on their equipment is as big as it is with esports.”

Of Humble Beginnings

When Alienware began in 1996 it had yet to be given its Area-51 meets X-Files otherworldly look and feel. Those early days were simple in the sense that a small group of hard-working individuals were looking to help people by ensuring their PC’s could play cutting edge games like Quake. “What we started to do was take off-the-shelf components because we had no proprietary products what so ever,” Frank recalls. “And we just started putting them into configurations that were designed to fit this game or that game. We even had customers send us their games, we would install them and guarantee that they would work.”

As mentioned earlier, 22-years in the world of PC technology is essentially a lifetime. The concept of discrete graphics, motherboards, CPU configurations and memory were not only foreign to most, the idea of opening a PC case was left to the realm of the IT professional. “You kind of had to be IT certified professional to be able to figure out how to get the stuff to work,” Frank explains drawing on the era’s lack of clear labelling or even layout. “Standards were kind of new in the industry as well. Folks wanted a simple solution and we were happy to provide it to them. Our goals were to sell enough that we wouldn't have to work for anybody else.”


It was a concept that not only took off, but the small team at Alienware began to see rival services by several competitions appear in popular industry and enthusiast magazines. It was at this point the three Alienware co-founders, Nelson Gonzalez, Alex Aguila, and Frank Azo, began discussing the idea of building and designing their own products. The now infamous logo was designed by Nelson Gonzalez, and the stand-out Alienware PC design and look would slowly begin to morph and take shape over the next few years. Culminating with the iconic Predator desktop that launched in 2003 – a product that took years of research and design and partnering with numerous hardware and component manufacturers from across the globe.

“A lot of inspiration came from Area 51,” Frank recalls, when talking about the Predator’s look. “We always thought to ourselves, ‘Hey that's where the spaceships are, the Roswell ships are, and that's where it's the kind of the hub, the nucleus for the Alien research that's out there’. So, what would that look like? And it was a decision that's what our machines should be inspired by, they were by-products from Area 51, or they were invented in Area 51.”


“The more biological direction and that really kind of set the tone for us,” Frank adds. “You can still see hints of that in the current products. But what you'll see today is more and more of a clean lab-like, highly sophisticated, Alien Research & Development Lab type of approach.”

Enter Dell

With a focus on performance and quality, it’s easy to forget that Alienware solidified and popularised the concept of a PC with a design and look that not only stood-out amongst the competition - but felt true to its identity and purpose. With an eye on both on-top of and underneath the hood. During its first decade Alienware would lead the charge with several industry firsts – easy upgrade paths for an off-the-shelf PC, advanced cooling features, and the first gaming laptops that could compete with a traditional desktop.

“We take that very seriously,” Frank responds to Alienware’s long history and commitment to quality and innovation. Which naturally, brings up perhaps the most notable milestone in its long history and the Alienware story - the acquisition by world-renown PC maker Dell in 2006. “We came to the table with a phenomenal brand, and a customer base, and a vision for our products and our design. Dell came to the table with economies of scale, and engineering capabilities and a quality focus that exceeded all our expectations.”


“How we introduce a product to market today,” Frank explains. “There's so much rigour and validation and quality exercises that we go through that it's almost perfect by the time we introduce it.” By leveraging Dell’s world-class service, engineering expertise, and global reach – it wasn’t long before the already popular Alienware became an almost household name among PC gamers the world over. “Dell really helped us recognise the potential and realise the vision we had for Alienware that we were always constrained by our own resources,” Frank continues. “In the 12 years that we've been part of the Dell family, probably would have taken us 20 or more years to accomplish had we tried to do it alone.”

What sets apart the Dell and Alienware partnership from others is Dell’s understanding of the power of not only its brand but that of Alienware. Even though the current Dell Gaming line-up offers affordable gaming laptops for enthusiasts and entry-level gamers the world over it does so leveraging the expertise of Alienware production and design techniques. It also sits comfortably next to the impressive line-up of Alienware laptops – the premium choice for those looking for a complete system with every feature and aspect fine-tuned and engineered to the nth degree.

The Rise of Esports

In recent years as the number of competitive hardware makers releasing products designed to appeal to the high-end gaming market continues to rise, one could almost track this phenomenon alongside that of the industry’s growing mainstream appeal and the emergence of professional esports – competitive gaming. Another aspect and side to the industry that has seen Alienware as a major presence from the very beginning.

“We've been involved for a long time,” Frank says, taking a moment to think back to some of his earliest memories of professional gaming. “Before it was called Esports, when it was just local LAN parties and things, we used to send out prize packs and stuff. And then we started to see the competitive scene kind of emerge, and we've been partners with these sports teams - Team Dignitas, Team Liquid, ever since.”


With its long history of engaging with communities and players, Alienware’s innovative edge would soon apply to the world of esports. “A few years ago, we realised that the innovation and disruption that was brought to Alienware's products and the way it went to market, and our brand - we hadn't really done that in Esports,” Frank continues. “We had been sponsoring teams, but everybody was sponsoring teams. So, we reached out to some of our teams and we asked them to give us their vision, what were some of the problems they were facing, and how could we really make a difference for them as an organisation?”

These initial conversations led to the realisation that the industry needed more than simple sponsorship or equipment, it needed state-of-the-art training facilities that focused on the physical as well as mental. In addition to this the team at Alienware realised that amateurs or aspiring esports athletes needed a pathway to realise their dreams. Both revelations leading to the creation of such a facility for Team Liquid in the United States, with another currently in development in the Netherlands, and the creation of the Alienware Academy. Which offers readily accessible tools to help people not only understand how they perform but offer usable data and information to improve their game.


“What the training centre has done for Liquid has been to really elevate their competitiveness,” Frank continues. “If you look at their competitive performance this entire year, and we opened the facility in March, it's been remarkable. They recently won the North America League of Legends Championships, for the second time. Aside from helping them elevate their performance, it's helping them attract some of the best Esports talent in the world.”

In terms of investment, Alienware’s current Esports programs almost rival that of the money it invests in research and development of new hardware. “Our investments in marketing, our investments in Esports are to make sure it grows in a healthy way.”

“We want to do this for another 22 years,” Frank concludes. “And for us to be able to do that, we need to be able to feed and nurture the gaming ecosystem, and we need to first and foremost understand that the overall gaming market is going to be larger tomorrow than it was today. If we can keep doing great things with product, with innovation, we keep helping gamers, helping customers, esports, we know that we are going to continue to earn customer's business out there.”

* - Based on orders reporting through Q2FY19, including PC hardware equipped at point of sale with GTX or R9+ graphics.



This article is brought to you by Alienware and Intel.