PC Gaming Alliance Launched

PC Gaming Alliance Launched (http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/en/index.asp)

Front Page Article (http://www.tribalwar.com/news/5289-Gaming-Alliance-Launched.html)

The Games for Windows program which Microsoft have been marketing for a while attempted to unify or at least strive for certain levels of consistency between titles. Microsoft have now partnered with a collection of hardware manufacturers, developers and publishers in order to bring to life the PC Gaming Alliance.

Founding companies within the PC Gaming Alliance include Activision, Microsoft, Epic, nVidia, AMD, Intel, Dell, Acer, Alienware and Gateway.

In a presentation given at GDC, the PC Gaming Alliance have announced their mission as a non profit organisation to 'drive worldwide growth of PC gaming'.

Not sure what they're trying to do here... Sounds like someone wanted to hire a shitty PR firm to sell the idea of PC Gaming, promoting brands, and most of the other companies just signed off on it with no intentions of making any commitments to the cause.

Where did you pick up this article from?

Please also note that Epic Games has recently been very critical of PC gaming to the point that they basically shunned it as "PC is kind of the secondary part of what we're doing" and blamed piracy, even though PC games sales were up 12% this year (without accounting for digital distribution). They also fell what's "driving the PC right now is Sims-type gamesand a lot of stuff that's in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That’s the direction PC is evolving into." Epic is currently being seen as a weakness in the alliance and it's mission, which is a shame considering what a unified voice could achieve, for proper games.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51406
and from their own site:
http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/en/news/press_releases/2008_02_19_pcga_launch.pd f
It was only just announced.

MS just wants to find a way to charge PC users more money like they already do console gamers.

Actually the most informative information is here:
http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/en/documents/PCGA_Announcement_Present ation.pdf

Yeah just what everyone wants. To pay for Microsoft's horribly shitty online gaming service.

Steam is going to continue dominating Windows Live until Microsoft realizes that they can't charge money for doing half as much shit.

Actually the most informative information is here:
http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/en/documents/PCGA_Announcement_Present ation.pdfam I crazy, or do I see Freespace 2 mentioned on page 8 of that pdf?