Dell founder sees gaming in PC industry future

Dell founder and chairman Michael Dell sees computer gaming becoming a $4 billion-per-year industry by 2010 as consumers hook up to high-speed Internet services to battle monsters on-line.

Dell told the Austin Game Conference on Thursday night that his company is positioning itself to be a leader in computer gaming.

"Things like multi-core processors, acceleration engines for physics and graphics, wide-screen displays, web cams: there are a lot of great things happening on the hardware side that can really make the gaming experience quite exciting," Dell said.

Dell, the world's leading personal computer maker with $55.9 billion in revenue last year, acquired Alienware, a Miami-based maker of gaming systems, earlier this year. Alienware had $200 million in revenue in 2005.

Dell, a Texas native who has long admitted being a big fan of computer games, says he attended the conference to determine what game architects and designers want to see in computer hardware.