Comments made earlier this week from Acer senior VP James Wong had the intarwebz ablaze with hunches that the firm could be entering the console market in one way or another. Now, however, a UK spokesperson has clarified that there "was a major misunderstanding," and outrightly asserted that the outfit was "not going to release any game console." Instead, the idea is to "develop a high-end PC targeted at the serious gamer." So yeah, you can take that Xbox 360 off of eBay -- looks like you'll be needing it for awhile longer.

[Via shacknews]

Don't start hawking your 360 and PS3 just yet, but it sounds like PC industry upstart Acer is considering a bid for the console market, or at least some gamer market share, with a game machine based on "open standards." Of course, this could just mean a computer built to PC Gaming Alliance specs -- Acer is on the PCGA's board -- but Acer's James T. Wong did make comparisons to Nintendo and Microsoft's offerings, calling them closed and proprietary systems. With a history of console prices subsidized by game sales, it's hard to imagine an "open" platform being able to compete in that space -- and even harder to imagine a company like Acer getting that kind of traction with the consumer -- but even if it is just a PCGA spec machine, we don't think it could come soon enough for the struggling PC gaming market.

[Via GameStar; thanks Akshay]

Gamers gather 'round, for we have a tale of a new platform from AMD that will surely get your pulses racing, at least if the idea of having two dual-core processors and four graphics cards in one machine sounds as appealing to you as it does to us. Known as the "4 x 4" Enthusiasts Platform (four cores plus four GPUs -- we know, it's a bit of a stretch), the setup will allow manufacturers to offer configurations which users can upgrade over time, so consumers could start out with one dual-core chip and and one or more video cards, for example, instead of laying down what will likely be loads of cash on a maxed-out system. Another interesting bit of info revealed at the AMD analyst day in Austin, Texas was the fact that dual ATI Crossfire configurations can be used with 4 x 4, which indicates that AMD's possible acquisition target is probably working on a quad-SLI-esque solution to match rival nVidia. So start saving your pennies, dear gamers, because things are looking to get mighty interesting this year.