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Halo 2 Only on Vista
iLogiK writes "Halo 2 will be available for PC, but only in Windows Vista. From the announcement: 'Halo 2 the game that redefined first-person combat and multiplayer action for millions of gamers worldwide, is set to explode onto PCs exclusively for Windows Vista. Halo 2 for Windows Vista will be developed by a dedicated Microsoft Game Studios team in partnership with Bungie Studios.'" That's one way to force upgrades. I thought just not releasing patches for the microsoft-worm-of-the-week would be enough ;)
Does this mean DirectX 10 will be available exclusively on Vista? Or are they simply introducing an artificial restriction here? If the latter is the case, I imagine someone will work around it fairly quickly.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Anyone gonna release a 'compatibility patch' for H2 after it comes out? :)
The only thing that Halo 2 redefined was hype. If these guys think that Halo 2 - which has been on the Xbox for months now - is going to be a selling point for Vista, they're sorely mistaken.
For the last 3 years, Microsoft has said that they're extending their XBox Live service to Windows when Vista comes out. (No, I don't know why nobody has reported it either; maybe because it still seems so far off. The usb version of the XBox 360 controller [announced at the same time] has already come out.) Anyway, Halo 2 comes to mind when I think of a game that utilizes XBox Live well. It makes sense that they'd use that title to highlight the new features of Windows Vista.
Notice, btw, how they're reinforcing their overall position by leveraging their two platforms in tandem. When some people say cross-platform they're thinking Windows/Mac/Linux. When other people say cross-platform, they're thinking PC/Console. Microsoft is creating an enticing proposition for the content developers.
Me, I just swore to avoid Windows XP because it doesn't offer much over Windows 2000, and so far I've had no issues with that. Now, Vista I will probably buy, but not because it supports Halo 2 (couldn't care less). I'll buy it because its an excellent upgrade for Windows 2000. When you skip an entire release, Microsoft's OS products are a lot more enticing :D
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Actually this is a sad myth in the Windows world, a lot did change with WindowsXP, stuff that would be important to almost everyuser, and from your level of knowledge especially you.
Things from several fairly big performance, but also stability changes are in WindowsXP, and were worth the upgrade, sorry that you didn't ever move over. However at this point, I agree you should just wait for Vista if XP would cost you to upgrade in the meantime.
However for people that think XP is only Win2K with crayon buttons, do a bit of reading, there are things that would surprised a lot of people.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/12/XP
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/kernel/xp_ke
Win2k was a massive milestone in the Windows world, so XP got overlooked, and this is where you will note a lot of things that the 'average' journalist just don't get or didn't understand well enough to report on. Also remember than WindowsXP is basically the newer Windows 2003 Server code base, (as long as you have SP2 installed).
PS To add to the above thread about Halo2 being used to FORCE users to upgrade to Vista, that is about insane. If that was MS's intent then the WPF and all the other Vista technologies they are making available for XP would not be available for XP users. Why would Microsoft bother?
Secondly, Bungie is the developer of Halo2, they actually make the decisions on the platform and graphics requirements, Microsoft doesn't micro manage their work.
So all the people with the conspiracies need to get a life.
Take Care,
TheNetAvenger