PC Gaming Alliance formed to fight consoles

With consoles now increasingly intruding on such hallowed ground as the real-time strategy genre, many PC gamers have adopted something of a siege mentality. This defensive attitude is also apparently afflicting a consortium of hardware manufacturers and software publishers, who yesterday announced the formation of the PC Gaming Alliance.

The first body ever formed solely to promote the PC gaming industry, the PCGA is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to "driving co-ordinated marketing and promotion of PC gaming... and creating forums for member companies to co-operate on solutions to challenges facing the PC gaming industry, such as hardware requirements and anti-piracy."

Said member companies include PC hardware manufacturers Acer/Gateway, Dell/Alienware, Intel and AMD. AMD also owns ATI, a leading manufacturer of PC graphics cards, whose chief rival, Nvidia, is also on the PCGA board along with PC game peripheral maker Razer. Rounding out the list are developer Epic Games and the biggest third-party publisher on the planet, Activision.

Ironically, the maker of one of the consoles being blamed for cutting into the PC's market share is also on the PCGA's board. After spending billions of dollars launching and promoting the Xbox 360, Microsoft has joined the board as part of its reinvigorated PC gaming initiative, Games for Windows.

The formation of the PCGA is drawing praise from analysts covering the PC gaming market, which took in $911m at US retailers last year -- a decline of 6 per cent. "This collaboration will provide developers and publishers with a champion for consistent demographics, hardware adoption and revenue measurement and reporting," DFC Intelligence David Cole said in a statement. "An authoritative source of information on the PC as a gaming platform will serve as an invaluable catalyst for growing the market and improving the consumers' PC gaming experience."

The announcement of the PCGA's formation was timed to coincide with the ongoing Game Developers' Conference, where many of its member companies are promoting their wares. The organisation also launched an official Web site.