HP Lunches Games Portal and PC Console for the Casual Gamer

HostReview.com
Thursday, May 19, 2005; 12:43 PM

HP today introduced HP Games, an online portal that offers consumers access to more than 100 of the best-selling family games. The portal is available now at http://www.hp.com/go/games.

The company also announced that the HP Games PC Console is expected to be available in late summer. Unlike the limited gaming options that ship standard with most consumer PCs, the HP Games PC Console provides customers a gaming experience that, until now, was only available on standalone game consoles and specialized PCs.

Built and managed by WildTangent, the HP Games portal offers the most popular games from leading developers, including Atari, Popcap and WildTangent Studios. HP Games caters to the booming audience of casual gamers seeking fun, family-friendly games to play on their computers.

The HP Games PC Console is expected to ship with dozens of popular games pre-installed on all new HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario and HP Media Center consumer desktop PCs starting in September and on consumer notebook PCs early next year. By shipping a game console on the desktop, HP is positioning itself to be among the major distributors of family-friendly, downloadable entertainment content.

"HP is committed to providing innovative PC solutions for our customers and offering HP Games is another way we're delivering on that promise," said Nick Labosky, general manager, Consumer PC Worldwide Beyond-the-Box Group, HP.

The HP Games portal includes a new client application that enables the direct delivery of games to a consumer's desktop using idle bandwidth to seamlessly download games in the background while also letting consumers control how and when they are notified about new game releases.

The HP Games PC Console allows consumers to browse the entire catalog of top titles and includes complimentary game trials to aid in making a purchase decision.