Konami enters the desktop PC market with new lineup available for pre-order

Konami's has begun accepting pre-orders for its new line of Arespear gaming PCs, though global availability is currently unknown.

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Konami has been quite a bit more active in the home gaming space recently. After focusing its efforts on other ventures for a long a while, it’s slowly turning its attention more thoroughly towards traditional gaming. Apparently, that doesn’t just include making video games. Konami just revealed its new line of Arespear desktop PCs with pre-orders opening for shipping in Japan come September 2020.

Konami’s entry into the desktop gaming PC space was first reported by Japanese tech site PC Watch, as well as Tom’s Hardware, on July 28, 2020. According to reports, the Arespear PC lineup is being produced by Konami Amusement, which has been largely responsible for the design and launch of much of Konami’s modern arcade and pachinko machine products. The initial run of Konami Arespear desktop PCs will come in three forms featuring different degrees of premium features and power, starting with the C300 as an entry-level PC, the C700 as an intermediate leap, and the C700+ as the high-end option of the three.

From the baseline Arespear C300 up to the C700+ pictured here, Konami is making a major play at the gaming desktop industry which will see its first shipments in September.
From the baseline Arespear C300 up to the C700+ pictured here, Konami is making a major play at the gaming desktop industry which will see its first shipments in September.

At the baseline, the C300 will feature an Intel Core i5-9400F processor with air cooling, 8GB of DDR4 memory, a 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. There are also two empty PCIe 3.0 x1 slots on the motherboard. Meanwhile, the Arespear C700 and C700+ will make use of an Intel Core i7-9700 processor with watercooling, 16GB of DDR4 memory, a 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD, a 1TB HDD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super. Featured on both of these configurations are one PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, one PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots, and one M.2 2280 port available for use. Each of the Arespear desktops feature an Asus Xonar AE sound card, an increasing number of USB 2.0 to 3.2 ports, and HDMI 2.0b ports.

Each of these towers cost a pretty penny. The more basic C300 is going to be running at around $1760, with the C700 at around $3016, and C700+ up around $3,226.

As mentioned before, there are currently no global launch details at this time, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless to see Konami enter the space. Recently, the company has entered the indie space through launches like Skelettack and collaborations with Dead by Daylight on Silent Hill content, floated a possible reboot of Silent Hill with the original creative leads, launched of all Castlevania music on Spotify, and put forth an alpha for an all-new home edition of Dance Dance Revolution 5 in their ongoing projects. It would appear that Konami is leaning hard into the gaming space in 2020 in a way we’ve not seen the company do in a while. Here’s hoping we get to see these new gaming machines stateside in the future alongside all of the many other ongoing Konami efforts.

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

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