PC Gaming Alliance formed at GDC

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 20th February 2008
Comments (28) Stumble
The Alliance exists to provide a unified voice for the PC as a gaming platform. Maybe they'll fight crime on the side.

The Alliance exists to provide a unified voice for the PC as a gaming platform. Maybe they'll fight crime on the side.

The PC Gaming Alliance, a long-rumoured brotherhood of PC game and technology developers, has been formally announced at this year's Game Developers Conference.

The Alliance is composed of many of the most important PC focused companies, including; Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Razer, Epic and Activision.

Heading up the Alliance is Randy Stude of Intel, who will act as the voice of the group - The Iron Man of the Avengers, if you will.

"One of our main major objectives is to provide one voice on PC gaming market. There's no one source that says 'hey this is where the PC market is going'. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are always calling their market share - we're going to call our market through this group," said Randy in the GDC announcement.

It's worth pointing out although the Alliance doesn't seem massive, it's actually a lot larger than you'd think. The fact that Dell is on board automatically brings Alienware into the mix, while the involvement of AMD also attaches ATI. On the games side of things, the recent merger of Activision and Vivendi means that the World of Warcraft developer is also directly linked to the project through Activision.

Hopefully the formation of the Alliance should help fight back against rumours that the PC market is dying - a view we strongly disagree with.

Can such a brotherhood of minds possibly work, or will it all end in bickering and backstabbing? Let us know your thoughts on the forums.
Quote Zurechial 20th February 2008, 09:51
Glorious!
Now, intelligent games please. Death to consolification.
Quote [USRF]Obiwan 20th February 2008, 09:55
Like I said before in another newsitem. They have to (or must) get involved into gaming or else they wont sell any 'new' hardware in the future. The path I think to go is, to fund game development by hardware vendors like for example Nvidia. They have oozes of money to spend anyway. Its a win-win situation for tnvidia because; Developers make new exciting games with the latest graphics bells and whistles. And to play this, 'we' have to buy new hardware from Nvidia to play it. No new exciting games, is no new hardware needed.
Quote Mister_X 20th February 2008, 10:19
I have all the major consoles and a few of the minor ones too, but i still consider myself a PC gamer. ood to see this sort of thing happening, though oddly worrying that they feel they need to...
Quote liratheal 20th February 2008, 10:20
I'm surprised at Acers involvement..

I wonder what they're contributing to it..
Quote AlexB 20th February 2008, 10:28
I'm not sure how it affects anything really?
Quote matee 20th February 2008, 10:32
I wonder why 6 out of 9 members are pc hardware companies..
Maybe if it was not for games no one would bother to upgrade PCs?
Of course there are exceptions, but its the games, that drive PC hardware business.
Quote p3n 20th February 2008, 11:00
Activision should be ejected for their crappy sequel money hoarding
Quote HyBry 20th February 2008, 11:28
I think they should get Steam on the board and get all the major publishers to distribute through Steam (or similar).
Also what PC gaming needs to avoid at all costs is console segregation/exclusivity - you can play this game only if you have - this one specific hardware, etc.
Quote Angleus 20th February 2008, 12:02
This is really good news, could save our gaming lives, hopefully they actaully do stuff rather than jsut make announcements
Quote Dreaming 20th February 2008, 12:17
No EA?
Quote Tim S 20th February 2008, 12:37
what upsets me is that Epic is on the list... With Mark Rein and CliffyB both saying that the PC is no longer their primary development platform, why is Epic involved? I'll assume it's because of the money.
Quote Lepermessiah 20th February 2008, 12:41
Tim S, I agree, Epic are one of the worst spreader of anti-Pc Bs. i really have started to despise anything that epic says or does.Pc gaming is not dying, game companies are getting lazy and more greedy. Piracy is an issue, yes. PC gamers have themselves for that, stop pirating and then trying to justify it, come on. Hopefully, this alliance can start to add some unity and promotion to PC gaming, and hopefully some more exclusives. All of those companies directly benefit from PC gaming, so they can chuck a bit of cash at a few exclusives. What the PC market has been missing has been some form of standard and promotion.

Epic being there instead of a great company like Valve makes no sense to me. Hopefully this group accomplishes something, instead of lip service.
Quote Lepermessiah 20th February 2008, 12:48
On another note, I agree with the other poster who said if these companies funded some development, Pc gaming would benefit greatly. Consoles do this, why not these big companies, they certainly can afford to, and benefit from the upgrades that drive hardware sales.
Quote Tim S 20th February 2008, 13:02
Nvidia and Intel have had pretty large devrel budgets for a while now and that involves sending people to work on site with the game developers to make use of new techniques and such. That's part of the reason why DX10 games came to market much more quickly than DX9 games did (after hardware and API availability ramped up).
Quote Lepermessiah 20th February 2008, 14:27
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim S
Nvidia and Intel have had pretty large devrel budgets for a while now and that involves sending people to work on site with the game developers to make use of new techniques and such. That's part of the reason why DX10 games came to market much more quickly than DX9 games did (after hardware and API availability ramped up).

Yeah, but unfortunately they are not funding Pc exclusives like console makers do.
Quote Tim S 20th February 2008, 15:28
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lepermessiah
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim S
Nvidia and Intel have had pretty large devrel budgets for a while now and that involves sending people to work on site with the game developers to make use of new techniques and such. That's part of the reason why DX10 games came to market much more quickly than DX9 games did (after hardware and API availability ramped up).

Yeah, but unfortunately they are not funding Pc exclusives like console makers do.

That's at least the current evidence... although I'm not sure if they helped to fund Crysis, since that remained PC exclusive, what with the rumours that Nvidia spent $5m on Crysis. That said, I have no confirmation as to the legitimacy of the rumours but if true, it's an interesting one nevertheless.

Both Intel and Nvidia invested time (and therefore money) in helping to develop the game (helping with multi-core, DX10, shader effects, etc), but I don't know whether it amounted to that much.
Quote Zyphron 20th February 2008, 16:25
Quote:
Originally Posted by matee
I wonder why 6 out of 9 members are pc hardware companies..
Maybe if it was not for games no one would bother to upgrade PCs?
Of course there are exceptions, but its the games, that drive PC hardware business.

oh so true, the rate of development on the consumer side would be massively smaller not to metion since Gen2 Xbox/GC/PS2 all used GPU's (not 100% sure on the PS2) from nvidia or ati.

whats funny about stuff like that is here my friend is saying how his Xbox is just as good for obliv and COD4 as my PC.
yet... when I show him how much better it looks and plays.(mind you on the same 1080i TV) his Jaw drops.

i agree, it sems dev's are taking the easy way and sticking to Console releases because "PC's are too hard/expensive to develop for"

Whatever.
Quote Gen.Ignorance 20th February 2008, 16:48
I don't think we can blame developers for the sharp decline in PC games sales, the blame should rest firmly on the shoulders of the publishers. It's the constraints placed on in house developers to stick to the same old tried and tested formula, which appeals to the broadest possible market, to generate the maximum amount of profit with the least risk, that has got PC gaming into the state its at right now.

The only developers thinking outside the box are the independents, but they lack the financial support because their creativity is also their weakness in the eyes of the money men who want the least amount of risk possible, something the indies cant give them with any concept that wanders slightly from the focus group data generated by the publishers market researchers.

Theres no way you can satisfy the broad tastes of your average console gamer, the key demographic for which is a teenager with a very limited attention span, and the interests of your average PC gamer who has more mature tastes and wont be frustrated if he cant master a game in the first 5 minutes.

To make the PC a viable gaming platform again it needs a kind of relaunch, a revitalising fresh approach to marketing PC games as being a whole world apart from consoles gaming, make it appeal to a specific audience. Otherwise PC gaming will continue to decline rapidly until it no longer exists.
Quote Bungle 20th February 2008, 17:13
"One of our main major objectives is to provide one voice on PC gaming market"

The Alliance is composed of many of the most important PC focused companies, including;
Intel (hardware)
AMD (hardware)
Nvidia (predominently hardware)
Microsoft (Hardware/game developer)
Dell (hardware)
Acer (hardware)
Razer (hardware)
Epic (game developer)
Activision (game developer)

Ok i'm pretty bad for analogies but isn't this a case of the mechanic telling the race driver how to drive?
Quote Lepermessiah 20th February 2008, 17:38
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gen.Ignorance
I don't think we can blame developers for the sharp decline in PC games sales, the blame should rest firmly on the shoulders of the publishers. It's the constraints placed on in house developers to stick to the same old tried and tested formula, which appeals to the broadest possible market, to generate the maximum amount of profit with the least risk, that has got PC gaming into the state its at right now.

The only developers thinking outside the box are the independents, but they lack the financial support because their creativity is also their weakness in the eyes of the money men who want the least amount of risk possible, something the indies cant give them with any concept that wanders slightly from the focus group data generated by the publishers market researchers.

Theres no way you can satisfy the broad tastes of your average console gamer, the key demographic for which is a teenager with a very limited attention span, and the interests of your average PC gamer who has more mature tastes and wont be frustrated if he cant master a game in the first 5 minutes.

To make the PC a viable gaming platform again it needs a kind of relaunch, a revitalising fresh approach to marketing PC games as being a whole world apart from consoles gaming, make it appeal to a specific audience. Otherwise PC gaming will continue to decline rapidly until it no longer exists.


U make some good points, but Pc gaming is not going away, never will as lons as there are PC's
Quote Bungle 20th February 2008, 17:57
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lepermessiah
U make some good points, but Pc gaming is not going away, never will as long as there are PC's
Well where the console market differs greatly from the PC market is in hardware sales. PC games fuel hardware purchases, whereas consoles fuel game purchases. Both markets are as strong as each other I imagine if you looked at combined sales. A decrease in quality PC sales would probably see a sharp decrease in topend hardware sales, so it's in the interests of all parties to keep the PC game market bouyant.....I hope.
Quote [USRF]Obiwan 21st February 2008, 11:14
[QUOTE=Bungle]
Microsoft (Hardware/game developer)
Epic (game developer)
Activision (game developer)
QUOTE]

Well seems the looser publishers/developers teamed up (allthough I miss EA in the list). Otherwise Valve and Blizzard would be involved too. But i guess they dont need to, cause they actually make big money. Those devs/pubs that are complaining about PC sales and pircacy should get their act together and stop doing elcheapo ports from consoles to PC thinking PC gamers will like the frustrating controls...
Quote CardJoe 21st February 2008, 11:24
Blizzard is owned by Activision. They are involved.
Quote Lepermessiah 21st February 2008, 15:31
Quote:
Originally Posted by CardJoe
Blizzard is owned by Activision. They are involved.

I am dissappointed valve are not there, that are one of the bright lights in Pc gaming, and have done more then most for it. They are also outspoken on supporting Pc gaming. I like the idea, dissappointed more devs, companies are not trying to do more.
Quote thetitletrack 26th February 2008, 15:42
I'm glad EA are not directly involved - it seems to me that nearly every game EA are involved in gets rushed out too quickly. I always have this impression of EA's money men standing over the game developers shoulders asking "Are you finished, yet?", and in my opinion this is part of the problem.

3 years ago... BF2 - rushed out too quickly, patched a bunch of times and it's still buggy as hell.
3 months ago... Crysis - rushed out too quickly, on release there was hardly any hardware to support it and the drivers were shocking.

It hasn't changed.

If Game Developers got the time to finish thier games properly and generate bigger sales through positive reviews as well as delivering higher quality products (less we forget they are selling a product after all), maybe the console fanboys would have less to shout about and we wouldn't need a PC Gaming Alliance to remind everyone that the platform still exists.
Quote [USRF]Obiwan 26th February 2008, 19:32
Quote:
Originally Posted by thetitletrack
If Game Developers got the time to finish thier games properly

Yeah! Like DukeNukem foreverwhenever

:D
Quote Hydra 27th February 2008, 16:16
It's good to know there's still life (and lots of it) in the PC. PC is like my one and only gaming platform. Playing an FPS on the 360 is just embarrassing for me, haha. The other night we were all sitting around playing Gears, and I was sucking hard. Of course, all I could do was say "Yea, well, if I was on PC!" Of course, nobody believed me :(

But, an effort really needs to be made to somehow fight piracy.

And Valve needs to join in too!
Quote MiNiMaL_FuSS 28th February 2008, 10:56
Valve and steam need to be brought aboard, they reach ALOT of gamers............and dar i say it....the devil its self 'EA' might be a good idea, as despite ruinign many great games they pack alot of weight.
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