PC Gaming Alliance Formed [Feb 20, 2008, 10:29 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Top technology companies form gaming alliance (thanks Mike Martinez) officially
announces the formation of the gaming alliance first revealed last week
(story) to help promote/revive the PC gaming scene. Here's word:
Some of the top technology companies, including Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and Advanced Micro Devices joined forces Tuesday to form the PC Gaming Alliance, which will try to promote the PC as a gaming platform.
The alliance will bring hardware makers, software companies, and game publishers under one roof to "accelerate innovation, improve the gaming experience for consumers and serve as a collective source of market information and expertise on PC gaming," the alliance said in a statement.
The companies will work together on challenges facing the PC gaming industry, including piracy and the establishment of hardware requirements for PC games, the alliance said. PCGA also hopes to accelerate growth of the PC gaming industry and standardize the development of gaming PCs and software by developing and promoting guidelines.
The alliance comes at a time when PC video game sales are falling. PC games sales in the U.S. were $910.7 million in 2007, down from $970 million in 2006, according to research from NPD Techworld. PC game sales in 2007 dwarfed in comparison to the sale of software for video game consoles like Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's Wii, which were $6.6 billion.
Unit shipments of PC game software totaled 36.4 million in 2007, compared to video game software unit shipments of 153.9 million, according to NPD.
The U.S. gaming industry already has the Entertainment Software Association, which represents vendors that publish games for both computers and consoles. About 90 percent of the $7.4 billion revenue of PC and console gaming software in 2006 belonged to ESA members, giving the association a dominant presence.
Other PCGA members include Acer, Epic, Nvidia and Razer USA.
The announcement comes during the Game Developers Conference, which is being held in San Francisco. During the show PCGA member Intel launched a new gaming platform formerly code-named "Skulltrail." The Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform includes two quad-core microprocessors, totaling eight-processing engines, and supports graphics cards from ATI or Nvidia.
" more of a problem is the fact for years we been being served pushed out the door half finished games."
Amen to that. I noticed that games got in worse and worse shape as internet access became more widespread. Before games more or less worked as advertised. Then "Demo discs" started shipping with magazines. They usually held a demo or two, and a shitpile of patches for various games. Eventually most everybody got internet access and it became the norm to ship busted ass-games. It really had become ridiculous in terms of quality control. Way back you had to know what you were doing to a certain extent. Loading drivers into high memory to free up enough base ram and most people who owned a PC 20 years ago knew what they were doing. I remember having to write seperate .bat and .config files for boot disks for different games. Anybody remember trying to get Falcon 3 to run on a 386? (Ahh good old DOS 4GW Protected Mode.)
The average PC user now knows how to turn it on a work the mouse, but little else. THAT is the audience that's needed to bring PC gaming back, but it's also the audience with the least tolerance for problems of any kind.
This comment was edited on Feb 21, 02:28.
Amen to that. I noticed that games got in worse and worse shape as internet access became more widespread. Before games more or less worked as advertised. Then "Demo discs" started shipping with magazines. They usually held a demo or two, and a shitpile of patches for various games. Eventually most everybody got internet access and it became the norm to ship busted ass-games. It really had become ridiculous in terms of quality control. Way back you had to know what you were doing to a certain extent. Loading drivers into high memory to free up enough base ram and most people who owned a PC 20 years ago knew what they were doing. I remember having to write seperate .bat and .config files for boot disks for different games. Anybody remember trying to get Falcon 3 to run on a 386? (Ahh good old DOS 4GW Protected Mode.)
The average PC user now knows how to turn it on a work the mouse, but little else. THAT is the audience that's needed to bring PC gaming back, but it's also the audience with the least tolerance for problems of any kind.
This comment was edited on Feb 21, 02:28.
Date
Subject
Author
Copyright © 1996-2024 Stephen Heaslip. All rights reserved.
All trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
Privacy Policy. Manage Cookie Settings.
News CGI copyright © 1999-2024 James "furn" Furness & Blue's News. All rights reserved.
Chatbear v1.5.0/blue++: Page generated 9 December 2024, 14:11.