Alienware are trying to start a war. A nuclear war platform war. Rather than take the launch of the new consoles lying down, they’re letting owners of an Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or Wii trade their old consoles in for a $200 reduction on their X51 desktop PC.
That brings it down to about the same price as one of those new-fangled Playboxes.
It’s a canny move by Alienware. Their barebones X51 is fitted with a 6GB of RAM and a GTX 645 graphics card so it’s far from a weak puss. That would normally cost you $700 but with the $200 rebate it makes it cost the same as the $500 Xbox One.
Of course, being a rebate, you have to buy the PC first. Once you have it in hand you can post off the ageing console along with the computer’s receipt and within 40 days you’ll have the cash transferred to your bank account.
Alienware also accept a number of old laptops and computers as trade ins, if you don’t have yourself a fancy console.
Though, that said, Alienware were one of the first to label their machines a Steam Box.