Interview with the Houston Chronicle

Sorry guys, I promise there will be a non-Blackbird related article soon -- but there is so much press, if I had to post all of it the blog would be full and they would take my account away!

Here is an interview with Dwight Silverman from the Houston Chronical.

Blackbird seeks slice of higher-end gaming pie

By DWIGHT SILVERMAN
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

In New York last week, Voodoo PC founder Rahul Sood fought back tears as he watched his latest baby being born.

We're not talking flesh and blood here. Sood, whose company is now part of HP, was at a launch party for the first product to come out of the merger, which happened last year. Sood's "baby" is the Blackbird 002, a new gaming computer that HP hopes will capture a significant part of a growing — and extremely lucrative — market niche.

It marked a year of work as Voodoo — based in Calgary, Alberta — was integrated into HP's massive organization, all the while planning and building the first of two lines of high-end computers. I spoke with Sood in January at CES, the annual consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, and you can read the column that resulted at www.chron.com/voodoo.

"The Blackbird is what we envisioned it would be from the start," Sood said in a phone interview last week. "We'll have a portfolio of two brands, and this one will pull the HP brand upstream."

And going upstream is becoming more and more crucial to computer makers like HP. Consumers may be lovin' the commodity PC prices they see online and at computer stores, but the folks who run the companies that make them aren't sleeping so well at night. Cutthroat competition and the ubiquity of computing means pricing — and profits — aren't what they used to be.

So HP and others are turning to higher-end markets once considered too small to bother with in search of higher margins. Gaming is one of those niches, because those who are serious about it are willing to pay what it takes to have the latest and greatest hardware and software. You may feel like the $799 desktop you recently brought home is powerful enough, but it's a feeble weakling to someone who plays state-of-the-art, graphics-intensive games like World of Warcraft or the recently released BioShock.

In March 2006, Round Rock-based Dell bought Miami-based Alienware. Six months later, in what was then considered a me-too move among analysts, HP snapped up Voodoo PC. But Voodoo actually is a different company than Alienware.

Voodoo makes custom, high-end systems by hand, while Alienware's gaming PCs are done in a more traditional manner. Dell planned to leave Alienware alone, while HP wanted Voodoo to infuse some of its DNA into the larger company.

And that's the idea behind the Blackbird 002, which combines some of the gaming know-how of Voodoo with the design expertise from HP's consumer and enterprise divisions.

For example, the Blackbird 002 uses liquid cooling to keep its dual graphics cards and multicore processors from melting down, something Vodoo has offered on its boutique products for years. The drives are hot-swappable, meaning they can be removed while the computer is still running, something originally developed by the server division of Compaq, which HP also bought.

In fact, the architect of the Blackbird 002's unique design — it sits off the ground on a stand and is rimmed with aluminum fins, both of which help better dissipate heat — was originally with the Compaq/HP group in Houston. Mark Solomon, who now works for HP in California, is a big World of Warcraft fan, Sood says.

The Blackbird 002 runs between $2,500 and $7,000 depending on how it's configured. That may sound expensive, but consider that tricked-out Voodoo PCs often sell for five figures and you'll see that, for high-powered gaming systems, it's a relative bargain.

During my interview with him in January, Sood said he'd been given the run of the legendary HP Labs and was looking forward to using some of the under-wraps technology he'd found there in his upcoming line. Unfortunately, much of it is still under wraps. He told me last week there's not much from the labs in the Blackbird 002.

"But we have some secret weapons in the HP labs," which should show up in future HP gaming systems, he said.

HP and Voodoo were able to pull off one amazing technical feat. Its main system board is made by nVidia and can use either dual ATI or dual nVidia graphics cards. Usually, PC makers must stock separate motherboards to support dual configurations of the two brands, but HP is now able to use the same board and save costs.

"We needed to choose a motherboard, and we chose the best board we could, but we're not going to choose two motherboards. That's stupid," Sood said. His team was able to engineer a solution that did not require competitors ATI and nVidia to cooperate.

The Blackbird will be available starting next month, though orders will be accepted at www.hp.com/blackbird in the middle of September. But don't expect to get it the next day. As is the case with Voodoo systems — the Blackbird is built at Voodoo's Canada facility — it will take awhile. Sood says to expect a 30-day wait, though he wants to "underpromise and overdeliver."

So far, Sood says the integration of tiny Voodoo with sprawling HP has gone well. Voodoo's fans worried that its personal touch would be overcome by HP's culture, but that's not been the case, and Sood says he has proof.

"We've had 0 percent attrition at Voodoo since the acquisition," he said. "No one has left. You won't get that answer from any other merged companies. It's very phenomenal."