10.25.2006
Hoodoo - Our take.
Posted by Chris Morley

It’s been an interesting few weeks in the industry. I can’t be alone in finding the HP-Voodoo acquisition to be a bit surprising.

When Dell acquired Alienware earlier this year, it was one of the worst kept secrets in the industry. But in general it just wasn’t that surprising. That acquisition was a major multinational buying a large competitor.

We’ve never considered Voodoo to be a significant competitor. Before this acquisition they were playing in a very small niche of a fragment of the overall gaming market. They never made it – part of why the acquisition happened. Through this acquisition, HP now has a gaming brand – it’s a different ball game and we take it very seriously. A lot has been made about HP’s mega billion dollar budget. But we couldn’t happier about this and here’s why:

Immediately

1. anything that draws more attention to the gaming space can only help us.


2. we’ve experienced a marked increase in sales of our high end gaming systems since the news broke. This tells me that all the people who cried foul and told Voodoo they were selling out and cheapening their brand – well, they’ve put their money where their mouth is.


3. we’re already working on the kind of new, broad sweeping innovations that will keep us on the cutting edge of the industry.

Further out

1. this just makes us stronger. It accelerates our plans for large scale innovation in terms of product design and the future.


2. this news changes our competitive landscape in ways we won’t feel for a while.

We know we are going to win this space

1. we have the technology and the right people to develop it.


2. we have the best support in the industry – 24/7, US-based, in-house. This is something none of our immediate competitors can offer because of their size.


3. we’ve made it to the scale that Voodoo (and others) haven’t been able to overcome. This is an incredibly tough industry and the fact that we’ve made it this far means we’ve done a lot of things right. That’s not to say that we haven’t made our share of mistakes. But as we move forward, we’re going to continue to build on the values and practices that have gotten us where we are today. And I know that these same values and practices are going to take us far into the future.


4. we run a lean operation with everything focusing on products and our customers. We don’t have a multinational corporate parent to answer to or seek approval from.

[10.25.2006 @ 5:28 PM]  [Digg it]