Washington Post Reporter Mike Musgrove has delved into a number of game companies abandoning the Entertainment Software Association like rats from a sinking ship. reasons given for the defections from the ESA include the high cost of membership fees, the scaling down of E3 and CEO Michael Gallagher not taking an aggressive role for games industry interests unlike his predecessor.

Gallagher’s] been kind of quiet since that [September WaPo profile]… After a Fox News show featured an uninformed pundit going off about the allegedly sexually explicit nature of… Mass Effect, some gamers complained that the ESA did not step in to defend the game industry…

While top-ranking game industry executives were quick to get on the phone or respond to my e-mail queries about Gallagher last year, they weren’t as chatty this year… Last year, Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft’s game division, got on the phone to sing Gallagher’s praises. This year, Microsoft sent me a statement: “We’re as committed as ever to the ESA, and we look forward to participating in E3 this summer.” Nintendo released a shorter, nine-word statement along the same lines.

In other words your asking more for less… what have you done for me lately.

via GamePolitics

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