Microsoft and NVIDIA exit PC Gaming Alliance

Current PC Gaming Alliance head Matt Ployhar has confirmed rumours that founding members Microsoft and NVIDIA have left the platform advocacy industry collective.

The two gaming tech giants' logos were discovered as having disappeared from the PCGA's site last week, with Ployhar eventually addressing the speculation to Big Download.

While the site indirectly quotes Ployhar as claiming the two heavy-hitters' departure would not affect the not-for-profit group, he would not give reasons for their exit - maintaining that should be done by Microsoft and NVIDIA themselves.

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.

In a recent blog post, Ployhar set out his plans for the PCGA and defended its purpose and achievements to date. "A large majority of our members want to continue moving towards exploring ways to provide better leadership to the PC Gaming Ecosystem at large and use the data we've accumulated to make informed decisions to help ship better games."

While he claimed it would be "premature to speculate" on the group's next objectives, he suggested areas of focus should be streamlining gaming hardware requirements, tackling piracy and attitudes towards DRM, and ease of use issues.

In terms of the PCGA's ultimate agenda, he claimed that "We simply want to ship better games, which are more fun, more profitable to the ISVs so they can hopefully keep feeding us more games, but also providing more value back to the consumers."