Commodore Returns to PC World, Sort Of

Last year, former computing giant Commodore announced that it would return to the world of games. The Commodore name was acquired and adopted in 2005 by Yeahronimo Media Ventures, Inc., which now goes by Commodore International and has established a Commodore Gaming division. At the time of the announcement, the company stated that it would make use of various game licenses established on the massively successful Commodore 64, before eventually moving into new game development. Earlier this month, however, the company announced rather different plans: it will launch a line of high-end gaming PCs, similar to those manufactured by companies such as Alienware and Falcon Northwest. Now, the company has revealed initial images of the Commodore-branded PC line, set to be fully unveiled at the CeBIT trade show being held this week in Hannover. Some of the cases feature images themed around PC titles such as Gas Powered Games' Supreme Commander and Ubisoft Montreal's Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Primo Technology has the scoop on the system specs of the first wave, as well as some comments from Commodore Gaming CEO Bala Keilman.

- Intel CoreT2 Extreme quad-core processor - Asus P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard - Two 150 GB 10,000 RPM SATA drives in RAID 0, with spare 500GB 7,200 RPM SATA drive - 4GB (2 x 2048) Corsair Dominator memory at 1066 MHz - Two nVidia 8800 GTX video cards - Creative Labs X-Fi sound card - Windows Vista Ultimate

"The all new Commodore range of PC's will allow gamers of all levels to enjoy the best that PC gaming has to offer," said Keilman. "We wanted to bring something new to the market, in the spirit of our Commodore heritage, and have worked hard to design a fully personalised product." Apparently, the Commodore PCs can be designed visually according to individual customer specifications. Commodore has not yet revealed pricing or release plans for the line. Further announcements are expected this week.