HP described how its consumption of VoodooPC has impacted both companies at a media event this week. Shane Robison, an HP VP, said that one of the biggest effects is that HP now has "Voodoo DNA" pumping through its hallways, we think like a virus affecting a host. Should the injection become a problem, HP may someday page Dr. Mario to sort things out; Rahul Sood, CTO of the HP gaming group and founder of VoodooPC, repeatedly said that HP wants to complement consoles and not be a competitor.

HP, however, offered few specific plans to bring PCs and consoles closer together from a gamer's perspective. Instead, the company showed a series of game technology demos that may someday be licensed to console makers, generating more income from its annual $3.5 billion research and development budget. One of those projects, mscape, has been called a handheld challenger in other stories, but HP executives told us that it's a platform that runs on certain PocketPCs and other devices; HP doesn't plan to ship an all-in-one hardware-and-software version of the augmented reality gaming tool.

HP will continue pushing its computers to gamers, keeping the VoodooPC brand at the top of its price/performance tier, while introducing a new line of PCs that fits between the gap between that ultra-high end and HP's standard machines.