On Wednesday last week in London, UK, we held a gaming event to discuss and celebrate the enormous changes we are seeing in the gaming industry. At the event we launched the new XPS 630 and announced our sponsorship of team Dignitas. We also held a heavyweight gaming industry panel discussion, which included Dell, Intel, Alienware, NVidia, Ascaron, Gamerbase, Ubisoft, Dignitas.

My favourite bit of news from the day was the announcement that Dell is sponsoring team Dignitas, who I managed to catch in the afternoon along with Dell’s Adam Griffin. Team Dignitas is a leading professional gaming team based in the UK with gamers from more than 20 countries across the globe. This announcement as well as meeting Su-Joy Roy and Dominic Mulroy from Gamerbase, brought it home to me that Dell's interest in gaming goes well beyond delivering some of the best hardware (both XPS and Alienware) in the industry.

In the morning we asked Dell gaming experts Abizar Vakaria, Chris Shelton and Brian Joyce about the future of gaming. My apologies that you’ll hear a few clashes in the background as the crew are moving furniture setting-up for the event.

A phrase from Susan Bookbinder, our moderator, resonated with me. It was along the lines of, “Like a fine wine the gaming and gamers are maturing into an evermore discerning breed.”  Gaming is now a fashionable social activity that you can enjoy with your friends and make new friends doing so.

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Note: panel members from left to right: Dominic Mulroy, Gamerbase; Ulrich Norf, Intel; Heiko tom Felde, Ascaron; Michel O’Dell, Dignitas; Susan Bookbinder; Abizar Vakaria, Dell; Su-Joy Roy, Gamerbase; Brian Joyce, Dell Alienware and Phil Wright, NVidia.

We have also added a few photos from the event on our Flickr site. And last, but not least, if you are interested in gaming and want join a growing community of gaming enthusiasts check out our Dell gaming forum.