New President For PC Gaming Alliance

The PC Gaming Alliance this week named Intel's Matt Ployhar as its new president, as the two-year-old group continues its efforts to promote and advocate the PC as a gaming platform. Ployhar, who was most recently the chair for PCGA's Data Research subcommittee, replaces Randy Stude, who had served as PCGA's founding president since 2008. Both Ployhar and Stude come from Intel -- Ployhar is a strategic planner for Intel Software and Solutions Group, dealing in the graphics and gaming industry; Stude is a director at the chipmaker. Ployhar, purportedly an avid PC gamer, also was previously an employee at Microsoft for 13 years. Ployhar said in a statement that he's "very committed and passionate about growing the relationships necessary with our industry and community leaders to ensure the continued momentum and success of PC Gaming worldwide." The group also said it elected Rick Carini of gaming hardware manufacturer Razer as VP, and re-elected AMD's Ritche Corpus and Capcom's Christian Svensson as treasurer and secretary, respectively. Member companies of the PCGA include Logitech, Corsair, GameStop, Capcom, Epic Games, Dell, Microsoft, Nvidia and others. In March this year, a PCGA study found PC software sales were up 3 percent to $13.1 billion in 2009, in spite of a substantial drop in boxed PC game sales. A growing amount of sales from PC gaming comes from microtransactions, subscriptions and digital distribution as opposed to boxed sales. The PCGA formed in 2008 with the intention to "accelerate innovation, improve the gaming experience for consumers and serve as a collective source of market information and expertise on PC gaming."