BigDownload reports that Microsoft and Nvidia have quietly left the PC Gaming Alliance, which was supposed to prove to everyone how utterly awesome and totally not dead PC gaming was. GamesIndustry adds:
Activision Blizzard, another of the group’s founders, departed the PCGA in 2009. Another major member, AMD has apparently now downscaled its status with the group from ‘Promoter’ to ‘Contributor.’ Still remaining as Promoters are Dell, Intel, Epic Games, Capcom, Razer and Sony DADC.
I find it completely hilarious that Capcom and Sony are with the PCGA but Microsoft, Nvidia and Blizzard are not.
Don’t think I can’t punch you thought the internet!
But seriously, I’m a hardcore PC gamer or was. Now the only time I’ll play a game on my PC is when I can’t play it on my PS3 or it’s complex enough to benefit from a keyboard (like most MMOs). I waited for ME2 on the PS3 for example. I want epics on the epic screen and action as big as possible on that old digital canvas. Comfy couch is comfy.
Not to mention mouselook. Shooters aren’t my first choice of game, but I so prefer the combination of speed and precision you get with mouselook. I’ve learned to play shooters on consoles, but when I’ve had the opportunity to play the same game with a mouse after learning it on a console (Mass Effect, Borderlands, Fallout) the experience has been much better.
What we really need is a left-hand controller for PC play that gives us an analog stick and several buttons. Because if there’s any drawback to keyboard + mouse for shooters, it’s that WASD is clunky compared to an analog stick. No speed control, and control over direction is crude.
I’ve also wished for more buttons on the mouse (particularly when playing an MMO), but I’ve never found one that actually worked for me. I’ve purchased several, yet somehow I can never comfortably use anything but left / right / mousewheel.
They probably just reached the conclusion that the foundation was doing nothing, and looking at there website that looks accurate, so they may just as well save some money.
The timing is strange though since the new president that is from Intel was just in the news with some interviews and I assumed they were trying to relaunch the foundation.
Bu I have to say that board of directors would work just as well for a foundation for killing gaming PC.
Intel, underpowered graphics chipsets that didn’t allow any gaming, Sony secureRom making life miserable for paying costumers, Dell overpriced gaming PCs giving the idea that PC gaming is expensive.
Why not connect your PC to your TV and use a wireless mouse/keyboard (or even your PS3 pad if you really want)? You’ll get vastly cheaper game prices and won’t have to sacrifice graphics and performance in the name of the comfy couch. Is it just a logistical thing?
A single “consolized” industry-wide standard specification home entertainment/computing/gaming system (hopefully the next Xbox) with digital download-only capability to save trees and foil pirates so that users will all be on the same sheet of music and game/software developers would not have to waste time and resources accomodating the minimum system requirement “needs” of jackholes who refuse to give up their 3dfx cards and 14.4k modems and thus holding everybody else back.
The horribly misnamed PCGA was, IMO, the biggest roadblock on the path to this necessary reality.
I don’t think Microsoft is any friend to PC gaming, but this isn’t the reason why. As a vehicle to promote PC gaming, the PC Gaming Alliance has been about as effective as Games for Windows. I guarantee that Blizzard cares about PC gaming, and they left the organization two years ago.
I’m challenged as to why it matters at all if Microsoft and NVIDIA leave the alliance anyway. I’ve bought more PC games over the past year than at any other point in my life, but they’re all through steam and less than $25, and most of them are pretty excellent. Is it really “killing” PC gaming at this point if the big name publishers that already don’t release anything I even want to do on it decide to stop formally supporting a pointless and unproductive organization that has yet to achieve much of anything?
Uh, what? Microsoft and Nvidia aren’t important because they are big publishers of PC games. You may have heard of them: one makes an operating system called “Windows”, and the other makes a lot of video cards for PCs. They are rather more important to PC gaming than any game publishers since it’s their stuff that most games run on…
He’s not saying that Microsoft and Nvidia aren’t important. He’s saying that the PC Gaming Alliance isn’t important.
All of them. But so what? It’s easier still to make games for the Nintendo DS, so maybe that should be the only platform available to gamers. Fortunately, it’s not our job to adjust our tastes to suit the convenience of developers.
How many users complain of having to upgrade every time the next game in a series comes out?
These days? Almost none. Hardware requirements have plateaued in the last ten years, and PC games have become considerably more scalable. The upgrade cycle for PCs these days isn’t much worse than it is for consoles. You can easily keep a PC for five years and still play most of the games on the market at the end of that time frame. Actually, you can probably play all of them, if you don’t mind turning the detail levels down. I did that with my last machine. My current machine is almost three years old, and will still run even the most demanding games with all the details maxed.
You may disagree and I respect that but it is my opinion on the matter…
Mocking the needs of “jackholes who refuse to give up their 3dfx cards and 14.4k modems” is an odd way to express respect.
These. Why wouldn’t MS and Nvidia pursue the same common interests (or more realistically, mouth the same vague aspirational BS) just because they’re not in the PCGA?
Also, I would think that developers rate the taste of consumers very highly.
These days? Almost none. Hardware requirements have plateaued in the last ten years, and PC games have become considerably more scalable. The upgrade cycle for PCs these days isn’t much worse than it is for consoles. You can easily keep a PC for five years and still play most of the games on the market at the end of that time frame. Actually, you can probably play all of them, if you don’t mind turning the detail levels down. I did that with my last machine. My current machine is almost three years old, and will still run even the most demanding games with all the details maxed.
Almost none?
HAW! HAW! HAW!
Anyway, it may suit you for your present circumstances and perhaps you don’t think there is an overall premeditated planned obsolescence model at work here, but I believe otherwise and if Dwight Eisenhower were still alive, I think he’d agree with me.
Mocking the needs of “jackholes who refuse to give up their 3dfx cards and 14.4k modems” is an odd way to express respect.
Sigh, fine I retract this. Change to “technologically infungible” for the above.
At any rate, bottom line is that I agree with Microsoft’s and Nvidia’s move and see it as a possible chance to start standardizing.
