Nearly two years ago in September 2006, HP announced that it purchased gaming
PC maker Voodoo for an undisclosed amount of money. Originally, Voodoo
remained a separate entity from HP and continued to focus on creating gaming machines
for high-end gaming customers.
Today HP announced that it is folding
the Voodoo brand into its HP line. HP says that it will maintain Voodoo as
a brand name. That statement frightens some Voodoo enthusiasts who fear that
the Voodoo name will be just that -- a name slapped onto anything HP wants to
market for more money to the gaming crowd.
PC World quotes HP spokeswoman Ann
Finnie saying, “It is just the next step of integration into the business units
that deliver Compaq Presario and [HP] Pavilion.” The good part about the
folding of Voodoo completely into HP is that the gaming systems would be easier
to get at retail locations and with the significantly larger staff of HP
systems would be faster to build and deliver.
Voodoo’s Rahul Sood said in a blog post, “Ultimately it means that Voodoo
and Voodoo-influenced products will be easier to buy, faster to get, they will
feature local service, and they will have the full power of HP’s marketing and
sales channel behind them. The bottom line is we have ignited the brand and
sparked big excitement; so we are now integrating our organizations to fuel our
growth.”
Finnie told PC World, “Don't
expect customers to see a difference.” Existing customer support and service
won’t change either. How this move will affect pricing of Voodoo computers
remains to be seen.