Maybe you’ve noticed that the PC gamers you know seem to be feeling rather put upon these days.

They have their reasons. Their favorite titles are inching over onto console systems and selling very well as a result — a horrible development in the view of some hardcore gamers. Furthermore, the PC game’s average trading value has dropped down around zero, because of retailers’ fears that PC games are too easy to copy and redistribute illegally. Resales of console games, on the other hand, are big business.

Plus, with all the marketing power behind the console makers, who hears a word about the PC gamer’s world any more?

Well, a new nonprofit group has formed to deal with that last problem, and try to end the other problems as a consequence. The PC Gaming Alliance intends to dedicate itself to “driving coordinated marketing and promotion of PC gaming,” as well as create “forums for member companies to cooperate on solutions to challenges facing the PC gaming industry,” according to a news release.

Among the alliance members are computer manufacturers Acer and Gateway, and Dell and Alienware; chip makers Intel and AMD; graphics cards makers ATI and nVidia; and game publisher Activision. A surprise name on the list is Microsoft, maker of one console that has become a name to the PC gamer’s pain. Microsoft says it has climbed aboard chiefly to help resurrect the company’s flagging PC gaming effort, know as Gaming for Windows.

PC Gaming Alliance’s debut was timed to coincide with the Game Developers Conference now going on in San Francisco.

Left out of the conversation on “solutions to challenges” mentioned at the alliance’s debut news conference Wednesday was its plan to tackle PC gaming’s biggest problem: cost. To get a good, crankin’ system for the kinds of high-definition titles made today, gamers must fork over $3,000 or more — far more jack than required for the average home computing system.

For example, Intel on Tuesday unveiled a new eight-core gaming system with 12 megabytes of Level 2 cache to speed up processing and room on the motherboard for four — count ‘em, four — graphics cards. Though Intel pitches the configuration as a high-powered “workstation,” it is, as TG Daily describes it, “about as useful to the average PC user as a Ferrari in your daily commute.”

The eight cores come in two quad-core processors selling for about $1,500 each. Add everything else around them, and you’re looking at a gaming system topping $5,000. Game Guy admits that he didn’t spend that much for his Nintendo Wii and DS, Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite, Sony PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable combined.

True, there are relatively less expensive PC systems out there offering great gaming experiences. But PC gaming overall presents a final bill that Game Guy just doesn’t want to pay for gaming alone. Maybe if the PC Gaming Alliance can do something about bringing the cost of the hobby down within the financial range of most gamers — and after seeing the list of alliance members, that seems unlikely — the Game Guy would be more inclined to jump aboard, and so would other people.