More Losses at PC Gaming Alliance

The bleeding continues at the PC Gaming Alliance as Sony DADC quietly slips out the door and Dell scales back its role to “contributing member.”

Last month the PC Gaming Alliance lost two heavyweight members, Microsoft and Nvidia, which despite being a pretty obvious blow to the organization’s credibility was played down by PCGA President Matt Ployhar, who said he didn’t expect their departure to have much impact. Even Microsoft spun the situation as a positive for PC gaming, saying it no longer needed to participate in the PCGA because all is now well with the platform and it wants to focus on its own PC efforts.

But now the group has suffered two more losses in the form of Dell, which has reduced its role from “Promoter” to the lower-tier “Contributor,” and Sony DADC, which has slipped off the membership roll entirely. That leaves only two PCGA founding members, Intel and Epic Games, in the upper-tier Promoter category, along with Razer and Capcom.

Sony DADC may not be everyone’s favorite member, what with that whole SecuROM thing, but at this point any shrinkage in membership can’t help but look bad for the PCGA. It’s possible that the shifting nature of its mission as detailed by Ployhar in February is driving the membership changes and that everything really is hunky-dory, but it seems at least as likely that it’s suffering from rather serious questions of relevance. If that’s the case, this sure isn’t going to help.

Source: Big Download