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Hewlett-Packard has purchased specialty PC maker VoodooPC, according to a blog post made by Rahul Sood, the president and chief technical officer of the company.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. HP also confirmed the acquisition. Following the close of the transaction, HP will form a separate business unit within its Personal Systems Group focused on the gaming industry, HP said.
“The bottom line: On behalf of Ravi, Trevor, Paul, Desmond, Angela, and the rest of the Voodoo team we are happy to report that HP has acquired Voodoo, and together—not separately—we are going to rock your world,” Sood wrote, referring to a “Project Vampire” that was “about to fly.”
VoodooPC will remain in Calgary, Canada. Rahul Sood will assume the position of chief technologist of HPs Gaming Division. Rahuls brother Ravi will become the director of strategy for HPs gaming division, which will consist of HP and VoodooPC products.
VoodooPC is the latest high-profile boutique gaming company to move under the corporate wing of a top OEM; Dell acquired Alienware in March, and Alienware now operates as an independent subsidiary. According to Sood, Michael Dell did in fact contact the company about an acquisition.
Soods blog implied that VoodooPC will be more closely tied to the rest of the HP product line, although Sood claimed that “past customers, current customers, and future customers will receive the same or better level of experience, quality, and service.”
Rahul Sood will also sit on the R&D council of HPs Personal Systems Group, where “you can expect to see our fingerprints on many of the product lines in other areas of Hewlett-Packard,” Sood wrote.
According to Sood, company founders had been in contact with HP for months, and cemented ties during the recent Tour de France bicycle race during the past summer.
Sood specifically named Paul Campbell, who led a gaming initiative within HP; Phil McKinney, HPs chief technical officer for the PSG; Todd Bradley, executive vice president of the PSG; Satjiv Chahil, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing for the HP PSG; and company chief executive Mark Hurd.
“Assuming that they didnt have much of a choice we speculated that Alienware would be acquired by Dell,” Sood wrote. “After the speculation went public we thought it would make sense to get back in touch with HP. We figured Mark Hurd had almost a year to settle in and we were hoping for good things.”
Soods blog post also painted a picture of Hurd as someone who brought a fresh start to the aging HP, and who spent Thursday being grilled by lawmakers as part of a pretexting scandal that spied on reporters and HPs own employees.
