Farewell, XPS.

After 10 years, Dell’s line of high-power desktop and laptop computers aimed at the gaming market is going the way of the dodo bird, according to The Wall Street Journal in today’s editions. The phase-out starts next month; the marketing campaign for the line will end even sooner.

But Dell isn’t getting out of gaming entirely. The company still runs Alienware, recognized as a leader in gaming systems. Dell now believes, however, that it makes better business sense to not compete against its own subsidiary, and so the company will focus mainly on the home and workplace computer markets.

After all, XPS sales were eating into Alienware’s bottom line, the Journal says. Sales figures were not disclosed.

XPS — it’s an acronym for Xtreme Performance System — originated in 1993 just as PC gaming was getting going. The systems not only are more powerful than most to meet the graphics demands of games, they also are a bit more stylish, with brushed metal surfaces plus tinted plastic accents and colored LCD lights decorating their exteriors.

And they are rather more expensive; XPS systems sell for two to three times what the typical Dell computer cost. Eventually though, XPS’s power and style trickled down into other Dell models on the heels of consumer demand, and now some smaller systems sport some variation on XPS’s features.

Redirecting Dell’s gaming energy also gives Alienware a boost in another area: development. A new line of Alienware products, with nicer external features as well as internal upgrades, is expected in the coming months, the Journal says.