Questions for Gamers [marketing-oriented]

[Inverse Icarus]

1) Self-relevance
If you were to buy the Dell "gaming rig", what would drive you to buy it (as opposed to building it yourself e.g.)?
Relevant determinants could be: attributes (price, components etc.), functional consequences (performance, durability etc.), psychosocial consequences (personal feeling, feelings of others about you etc.), and values (self-esteem, and other preferred modes of behavior and states of being).

if it costs a lot more than what i could get at a computer show (and it would if you wanted to turn a profit) i wouldnt buy it, so cost, top of the line parts, super support, and free replacements for when i try to overclock everything and end up melting some silicon.


2) Knowledge
a) Would you what to buy (which components to order)?
b) Would you know what to buy it for?
c) Would you consciously use the product for its purpose (gaming)?

a) i'd KNOW what to buy if thats what you mean
b) yes
c) yes

theres always alienware

[Zopperoni]

Thanks again, folks, your responses will be useful for our Analysis, or for some other stage in the project.

Uberkrux,

I did look at AlienWare, Voodoo, and Falcon Northwest as examples.

[reds4ever]

one problem for Dell that UR touched on is that people who known enough to be able to pick their own specs in a high end system probally known enough to build it themselves (and exactly how much money they could save doing it)

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by reds4ever
one problem for Dell that UR touched on is that people who known enough to be able to pick their own specs in a high end system probally known enough to build it themselves (and exactly how much money they could save doing it)

thats the fact. if you really wanted to sell these things, you'd have to have a minimalistic price markup. if you bought in bulk from hardware manufacturers, you may get the parts cheaper than what people can find at computer shows. if you then raise the price of the part a little (still under or at the market value) the box would be pretty close to what i could build one for.

you'd probably make the majority of your money on service / warranties.

or, you could impliment some kind of system where i pay a set price per year, and i get the newest vid card on the market whenever i request it (up to twice a year, have to send old part back working).

The boxen would have to be completely customizable (gateway is notorious for being wh0res about this), i should be able to tear it down and build it back up if i feel the need to.

another thing that chaffs me about Dell / Gateway is the fact that if you f*ck with the hardware (overclock, add new stuff thats not approved) you violate your warranty. you'd either have to allow such modifications (not very likely to happen), or offer raw parts cheap (again, cheaper than computer shows).

it probably wouldnt work out too well, and you're fairly sure not to turn a profit for a while. but it could be a great company if you had a ton of money with nowhere to put it.

[Grrr]

1) - No ... Dell doesn't particularly like people tampering with their systems ... and I'd want to overclock it.

2) Yes | Yes | Yes (Not that I'd buy it).

[Grrr]

The thing is that Dell would have trouble matching self built systems as many people use secondhand parts and illegal/semi-legal software.