Will Vista Run Your Games?

mikemuch writes "With Vista reaching the more stable beta 2 designation, Jason Cross at ExtremeTech decided to run a slew of popular PC games -- Oblivion, F.E.A.R, GTA, Civ IV, WoW, and more -- on the OS to see what will and won't run, and how well. His findings are encouraging, but unsurprisingly the OS is not quite ready for prime time. Some work is needed on the part of driver writers, Microsoft, and game developers to get the gaming experience ready for launch day. The biggest problem he found was StarForce copy protection and a performance drop-off in many of the games when using anti-aliasing. From the article: 'With Microsoft proclaiming a "PC gaming renaissance" around the launch of Vista, they need to really deliver a fantastic experience, and it's not quite there yet.'"

Comments

OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wont even run your games? They really ARE copying OS X.

Re:OS X?

[Midnight Thunder]

It wont even run your games? They really ARE copying OS X.

What do you expect. They have a perfectly fine gaming machine that they want to sell you, that just needs a TV ;)

Re:OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Microsoft anounces today that they will be releasing a new product called Nirvana today. Nirvana will be the future of TV, the world first next gen TV, bringing a new area of technology to assist people in their lifes by bringing new entertainment value to their lifes. Nirvana will bringe the gap between cable, satalite, video on demand, internet video, movies, and downloaded movies. The MPAA is already endorsing this new device as a great leap forward for America. When ask when Nirvana will be ready for consumers, Microsoft promises that it will be ready for the 2006 Christmas shopping season. However, sources close to Microsoft say that release date is optomistic at best, and that there is no way it can be released before 2007, others claim sometime in 2009.

Am I the only one. . .

[LunchTableGoat]

Am I the only one that read the headline as "Will Vista Ruin Your Games?"

Re:Am I the only one. . .

[gEvil (beta)]

Am I the only one that read the headline as "Will Vista Ruin Your Games?"

Six of one, half dozen of the other...

Re:Am I the only one. . .

[rholliday]

Nope. That's exactly what I saw, too.

And what I'm assuming to have happen. :)

Re:Am I the only one. . .

[FirienFirien]

What's more amusing is that the summary is actually relevent to that too...

Capt. Obvious

[Agent00Wang]

"and it's not quite there yet"

Hence why it's coming out next year, not now.

Re:Capt. Obvious

[plague3106]

Indeed. No shit, a beta version of an OS doesn't properly run games from the previous OS yet.

Re:Capt. Obvious

[SatanicPuppy]

So you're saying a mature OS, like XP, for example, should play most games from previous versions of Windows?

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have found this to be anything but the case. They break games from one version of Direct X to another, more less the whole OS.

Microsoft has never shown themselves to be worried about breaking backward compatibility. The compatibility mode built into XP is a joke, and not a funny one.

Re:Capt. Obvious

[LearnToSpell]

Microsoft has never shown themselves to be worried about breaking backward compatibility.

I don't agree with that at all. There's nothing a developer would like more than to be able to completely ignore backwards compatibility, and there are few things more important to people. Microsoft would LOVE to just break everything and start fresh, but there's no way anybody would upgrade if none of their programs ran on the new OS. Whether or not they're successful is a completely different issue. :-) I guarantee they spend a tremendous amount of time on it though.

Re:Capt. Obvious

[drsmithy]

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have found this to be anything but the case. They break games from one version of Direct X to another, more less the whole OS.

For example ?

Microsoft has never shown themselves to be worried about breaking backward compatibility.

Considering the ridiculous lengths Microsoft commonly go to so that backwards compatibility is preserved, that's pretty funny.

You were shooting for "+1, Funny" right ?

Re:Capt. Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a HUGE gamer, but I know that the first few Elder Scrolls games won't work in XP without a fan made hack (and of course the DOS ones only work in DOSBox - a DOS emulator). And almost all my pre-XP import games refuse to run in XP, and I had a couple older flight sims that wouldn't work in XP but played perfectly in 2000. I'm no expert, but I'm thinking MS only care about backwards compatibility with regards to corporate level appications and such. Oh, and would this be a bad time to bring up the whole .doc thing?

Re:Capt. Obvious

[plague3106]

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have found this to be anything but the case. They break games from one version of Direct X to another, more less the whole OS.

I'm going to call bullshit here. For the last 3 or 4 versions of DX, the previous API remains in place, unchanged. To code to the new version of DX, you must code to a new (but similar) API.

Why is this even a question?

[entmike]

Of course Vista will run a majority of its back catalogue. If they want to make money, of course it will support the major titles. I'm sure as always there will be kinks to work out, but are we really going to have a discussion about how it potentially won't? Microsoft's track record has gotten better for its backwards compatibility over the years, at least in my book.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[Chowderbags]

Because the Windows XP attempt at compatability layering with older games went soooooo well. There were plenty of good games, like Alpha Centari, that XP won't run unless you get the patch that the developer had to make to let it be compatable. Given that Vista is coming with a new version of Direct X that won't be compatable with any version before it, will the situation repeat itself where the attempt of a system workaround will fail miserably?

Re:Why is this even a question?

[PFI_Optix]

100% backward compatibility is a stupid expectation. Considering the technical hurdles to get DOS- and Win9x-native software to run on what is essentially a rework of Win2K, I think they did a great job of providing compatibility that didn't have to be there.

Apple and Linux aren't any better about running 6- to 10-year-old software. OSX just refuses to run quite a few old programs, and Linux just drives you insane trying to sort out dependencies and versions and all the rest of that fun stuff.

When it's done right, Linux is probably the most backwards-compatible...but XP's compatibility is somewhere in the middle, and much easier than Linux...when it works.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[AuMatar]

I've seen Unix binaries for HPUX run 7 major versions after the original compilation, and we didn't have source. So I think that pretty damn near 100% backwards compatibility for a more used OS should be achievable.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[heinousjay]

Your expectations are backwards - when there is a limited software pool running on a limited hardware pool (like you HPUX example), backwards compatibility is easier to achieve. Windows software vs. hardware combinations are so complex as to be nonunderstandable.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[PFI_Optix]

And I've seen programs designed for DOS 3.3 run under Windows XP.

Just because we've seen it done doesn't mean it's always feasible.

And the other reply to your post sums up my other point nicely, so I don't even have to make it :)

Re:Why is this even a question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heard in a locker room, about heinousjay's mom:

But what's the point of keeping it around if we can't eat it?

Re:Why is this even a question?

[Chowderbags]

At the very least they could easily allow for *installation* of older Windows versions so that if someone wanted to, they could partition their hard drive and run something. That's not a perfect solution either, but at least you wouldn't be stuck with the complete inability to run older software without trying to find older versions of windows for resale (or download them, and risk an inane lawsuit).

Re:Why is this even a question?

[drsmithy]

I've seen Unix binaries for HPUX run 7 major versions after the original compilation, and we didn't have source.

And XP running DOS programs dating from the mid 80s is not at all uncommon.

DOS games - as anyone dating from the era should know - *frequently* relied on direct access to hardware and undocumented bugs/quirks/features in both hardware and the different versions (and brands) of DOS. That they often don't work in a compatibility layer that doesn't allow direct hardware access and typically only reproduces documented functionality, is hardly surprising. They are a special case.

Shit, with many later DOS games (eg: just about anything from Origin) it was often a challenge getting it to run *in regular MS-DOS* - and you're expecting compatibility from a completely different OS ?

Re:Why is this even a question?

[Anonymous Coward]

HP isn't unique in this regard, Mainframe, VMS, and Unix vendors design changes to not break backward compatibility. Old programs, APIs, and libraries that customer software depends upon are augmented, extended, or just maintained, not changed or removed, for example. Old types of systems are kept running for compatibility testing. Compatibility is guarantteed and anything breaking it is a bug.

Linux vendors don't design the OS and the libraries and programs that come with it, so they don't have this choice. They also don't spend the money required for extensive upfront testing and don't make compatibility guarantees.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[snuf23]

"OSX just refuses to run quite a few old programs, and Linux just drives you insane trying to sort out dependencies and versions and all the rest of that fun stuff."

And now that classic is no longer supported on Intel processors all those ancient Mac apps will not run.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[Bert64]

Not without an emulator, but some do exist that can atleast run m68k mac software...
The idea is, to break backwards compatibility late enough that you can emulate the old machines as fast or faster than the original hardware the apps ran on. Ofcourse, this relies on people not writing apps for the old OS on new hardware.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[Bert64]

And Solaris does the same, and most of the other commercial unixes... VMS can do the same thing too.

This is much easier to achieve than on dos/windows, for a number of reasons:

UNIX programs tend to use the APIs, rather than accessing hardware directly like dos games did
UNIX APIs are standardised, documented and have remained so for years, there is no incentive to use undocumented functionality because that would hurt portability to other platforms (many unix programs are written for multiple unix platforms)

Re:Why is this even a question?

[mmalove]

"100% backward compatibility is a stupid expectation."

I disagree. Maybe I just don't buy into the whole software is a service mechanic theme yet. I find however that I've peeved when I have to jump through hoops and hurdles to make a game that came out in the 1980s function on "state of the art" technology. When the OS starts requiring a quarter GB of ram just to run, I *DO* expect somewhere in there room for the 640k that ran everything in DOS back in the day. We're talking less than 1% of the whole system here, to run an OS licensed by the same company.

Some of the later OSs, like Win 95 and Win 98 - I could see issues involving newer file systems, and security holes. Still, if a runtime command existed back in the day for a software, give the computer operator the rights to run it. Everytime a software becomes obsolete on a new OS, I view it as that OS losing a feature or functionality.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[snuf23]

I'm pretty sure that they run PowerPC code now as well. As far as emulation goes it just means you are mostly in the same boat as emulating OS9 on any other OS (i.e. Windows). Classic wasn't perfect but it did make running the old software much easier than getting an emulator working.

Re: Will Vista Run Your Games?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Not exactly a StarForce problem

[IamTheRealMike]

Nearly every copy protection system uses kernel drivers, and if Vista isn't happy about loading older drivers I'd expect variant of these problems to affect many games and some apps too (Picasa and iTunes both use kernel level code for some features).

Blaming this on StarForce specifically hardly seems fair unless there's a specific reason Microsoft are blocking it from loading ....

Re:Not exactly a StarForce problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the heck does Picasa need kernel code?

Re:Not exactly a StarForce problem

[DarthChris]

iTunes doesn't bugger your CD drive up. (There have been cases where Starforce has caused physical damage to CD burners.)

Re:Not exactly a StarForce problem

[PFI_Optix]

Offtopic: I've heard that several times, but haven't been able to find any real proof of it.

I do know that SF has essentially crippled CD burners until a complete reinstall of Windows was done.

Re:Not exactly a StarForce problem

[CogDissident]

Yup, happened to my burner. It won't even recognize blank CDs anymore.

Re:Not exactly a StarForce problem

[IamTheRealMike]

Same reason iTunes uses it, it does its own CD burning.

Re:Not exactly a StarForce problem

[Naradak]

Apparently neither has Starforce. They even had a contest a few months ago that offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove (by reproducing it in their office) that their software physically damage drives .

Re:Not exactly a StarForce problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between starforce and something like iTunes is that iTunes uses a kernel driver in order to help you accomplish something (cd burning).

Starforces uses a kernel driver in order to hinder you. It offers you NOTHING that you'd actually want or use.

So, you take a game that would normally work on Vista, slap on starforce, and bam.. game no longer works on vista. Just ask anybody who had WinXP 64-bit version and bought Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Game wouldn't run because of starforce drivers. Starforce said that ubi needed to update the game with new version of starforce to get x64 compatibility. Ubi never did. However, now that it's cracked, it works on x64.

I'm not sure that's the question

[Dark Paladin]

The question isn't "Can it run my games", but "Is there a value to installing Vista that will make my games run better"?

The only reason why I have a WIndows box is for the games (and if they ever get the virtualization stuff fast enough in OS X, then that goes too). It runs XP, and seems to work OK (except that Oblivion keeps shutting down. Shrug.)

With Vista, the two extra goodies are:

ESRB rating lockdown - as a Dad of three, that's all right. Personally, I find it easier not to buy my children games I don't feel they should be playing, or let them play it - but OK, it's a nice feature.

DirectX 10, which evidently will *only* be Vista (though I've yet to see a technological reason why it can't go into XP other than "We need a reason for you to upgrade to Vista).

DirectX 10 won't really be interesting to me until I upgrade the video card, and in a year with the Wii, and maybe a reduced-price PS3 purchase next year, I don't see myself upgrading to Vista then for DX10 until at least 2008 - which would be in time for the first service pack to come out to fix the things they missed in Vista.

So, for these two things, I'm not ready to shell out the $130 or whatever it will cost - but I guess it's good to know that the games that run under the gaming OS I use now will continue to run.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[mrchaotica]

...but I guess it's good to know that the games that run under the gaming OS I use now will continue to run.

That in itself is another excellent reason not to upgrade to Vista, because with its infestation of DRM and Treacherous Computing that won't be guaranteed in the future.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Dark Paladin]

Good point - especially as the article mentioned that unless you massage some Admin rights, the Starforce protected games wouldn't run.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[drinkypoo]

Well, assuming you can't find a crack, you could always just rip it to an image and use daemontools to mount it with emulated protection...

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[fm6]

The question isn't "Can it run my games", but "Is there a value to installing Vista that will make my games run better"?

That assumes that people will mostly get Vista by upgrading from XP. More typically, they'll get it pre-installed on new machines. If Vista breaks a lot of games, that's a problem for gamers who want to buy new hardware.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Tibor the Hun]

Funny, those are the exact reasons why OpenGL and Console gaming will prosper while Bungie and Valve are asking WTF?

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Tim C]

Eh? Starforce protected games won't run under XP without admin rights either - or are you trying to say that you need to grant the admin account even more rights under Vista? (Which raises two questions - what account do you use to elevate admin's privileges, and why not simply run the game as that account instead?)

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[WWWWolf]

The question isn't "Can it run my games", but "Is there a value to installing Vista that will make my games run better"?

But you're forgetting the very valid question of "Will my games still work when Vista is finally foisted upon me?"

I have a Situation in my recent memory. We used to have this silly, awful, yet popular platform for games called MS-DOS. Then Microsoft absolutely brutally killed its support, when they grew tired of people asking "how the hell do I run Ultima VII?". Then there was a loooooong break for playing MS-DOS games, until finally the folks came up with a little thingy called DOSBox, and >1GHz machines got common enough to run all Pentium-era games.

If Vista breaks old games, that brief period of dark ages may become pretty darn long... until, sometime in 2010s, WINE will finally catch up with Microsoft's API shenanigans and you're again able to run those good old Windows games.

Though I'm not particularly worried - Win32 game APIs probably aren't fluctuating that much, after all, to paraphrase certain failed prediction, "every API worth inventing has already been invented". Though regrettably there have been mysterious game breakages when running games that depend on proto-ancient DX versions...

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Renraku]

50% of the reason Microsoft is doing this is because XP has been compromised and is now freely pirated.

If they can get away with making DX10 ONLY for Vista, then they can have XP Round 2 with people and try to make it harder to pirate. And besides, all those legitimate users will have to buy it, too.

Oh and the hardware required to support it.

Fun times for everyone but the consumer! As usual!

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[drinkypoo]

Well, I do agree, but there are issues and liabilities with console games as well. They're much harder to back up, requiring additional hardware in most cases, and you can't even back up GC games, although you can load copies over the network, verrrry slowwwwly. Or so I'm told, I have yet to do that one. OTOH, it's true that they tend to "just work". Not always... For instance Gran Turismo 4 has been killing old school PS2s, the few that managed to survive this long with the crap Sony laser units for example... And the drive on my Xbox is going out, and replacing it is a PITA because it's not commodity item, you have to pay a premium if you want your drive door to be on the system. Console gaming is not without issues.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[ElleyKitten]

Eh? Starforce protected games won't run under XP without admin rights either - or are you trying to say that you need to grant the admin account even more rights under Vista? (Which raises two questions - what account do you use to elevate admin's privileges, and why not simply run the game as that account instead?)

As I understand, in Vista you will not be able to run with full control over everything, even if your name is administrator. When you need more priviledges (for things like installing software, mucking up your system folders, etc) Vista will ask for your password. This protects against spyware and viruses and dumb users (obviously not completely, but somewhat). Ubuntu and Mac OSX do this as well, though from what I've heard Vista doesn't implement it as well, and asks for your password at for stupid things like adusting the time.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[mrchaotica]

or are you trying to say that you need to grant the admin account even more rights under Vista?

I don't know if it applies in this particular case, but one difference between XP and Vista is that XP will complain if you try to install a non-certified driver. Vista won't let you install a non-certified driver at all. In case you're wondering, this is so that nothing that hasn't been vetted by Microsoft (i.e. is "Trusted") can run in kernel mode (and thereby circumvent Treacherous Computing).

In other words, in Vista even the admin account is restricted and you can't elevate privilages to "real" root at all, unless you're Microsoft itself.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Verteiron]

I think the point is that XP's user accounts are Admin accounts by default. Under Vista, I believe that accounts are -not- in the Admin group by default. So Starforce (and tons of other apps that require admin rights to run) will, to most people, suddenly "stop working" under Vista.

Most users don't know what administrative privileges mean, and couldn't care less about it. All they'll see is that Vista breaks stuff that used to work.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[ichigo 2.0]

DirectX 10, which evidently will *only* be Vista (though I've yet to see a technological reason why it can't go into XP other than "We need a reason for you to upgrade to Vista).

The problem lies in the new display driver model in Vista, which allows GPU's to be multitasked among other things. Porting it to XP probably wouldn't be a simple task, and I think it is a valid excuse to making DX10 Vista exclusive.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Joe The Dragon]

Windows vista X64 will not run unsigned drivers the 32 bit one will run some of them.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to dual boot win/lin so I could play my games. After even Doom (yes, the first one) gave me BSODs every time I gave up and my Linux system gained a lot more space (yay for Gnometris!)

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[karnal]

I've not seen anything on Vista - but what if your password is *blank*? (and no, I'm not meaning the letters b l a n k....)

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Senzei]

Ubuntu and Mac OSX do this as well, though from what I've heard Vista doesn't implement it as well, and asks for your password at for stupid things like adusting the time.

The reasoning behind this is that adjusting the clock in windows modifies the system time instead of some user-specific timekeeper. Without that restriction some chronologically pedantic dingus could knock himself out of sync with the domain servers and will fail any kind of authentication attempts automatically. Granted this means absolutely nothing for home use and gaming, and it is stupid that it works this way instead of keeping system and user time independent, but this is microsoft we are talking about, logical is not one of the adjectives I would apply to their system design.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[ElleyKitten]

I've not seen anything on Vista - but what if your password is *blank*? (and no, I'm not meaning the letters b l a n k....)

I'm guessing you can't make it blank. From everything I've heard, Vista is supposed to be heavy on security, and allowing blank admin passwords would pretty much make all that work useless.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that DirectX10 will only be available on Vista (or greater) is because of the new display driver model (Windows Display Driver Model or WDDM). DirectX10 really does REQUIRE (technical not marketing) a WDDM-compliant display driver. The WDDM cannot (technical not marketing) be backported to XP due to its (XP's) design.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[drsmithy]

DirectX 10, which evidently will *only* be Vista (though I've yet to see a technological reason why it can't go into XP other than "We need a reason for you to upgrade to Vista).

You don't think the completely new display subsystem and video driver model in Vista might have just a little bit to do with it ? Just maybe ?

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[drsmithy]

Ubuntu and Mac OSX do this as well, though from what I've heard Vista doesn't implement it as well, and asks for your password at for stupid things like adusting the time.

If you cannot understand why adjusting the system time needs elevated privileges, you're probably not qualified to be making any comments about security. At all.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[ElleyKitten]

If you cannot understand why adjusting the system time needs elevated privileges, you're probably not qualified to be making any comments about security. At all.

Linux and OSX, both more secure OSs than Windows, allow users to change the time without root priviledges.

I'm sorry I don't understand your crazy Windows ways. Maybe I should look to your OS for guidelines on security, given it's great track record in that department. Ha!

[/sarcasm]

Actually, as I understand the reason that *nix lets users change the time is because they're not changing system time, they're changing their individual user time. Which, as far as protecting the system from dumbass users goes, makes a hell of a lot more sense than the Windows way.

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[drsmithy]

Linux and OSX, both more secure OSs than Windows, [...]

Quite arguable.

[...] allow users to change the time without root priviledges.

Linux certainly doesn't:

[CHI csmith@unix-prod01 ~]$ date
Wed May 31 21:35:42 CDT 2006
[CHI csmith@unix-prod01 ~]$ date 05312145
date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted
Wed May 31 21:45:00 CDT 2006
[CHI csmith@unix-prod01 ~]$ date
Wed May 31 21:36:02 CDT 2006
[CHI csmith@unix-prod01 ~]$

Unless, of course, you're root:

[CHI csmith@unix-prod01 ~]$ sudo date 05312145
Password:
Wed May 31 21:45:00 CDT 2006
[CHI csmith@unix-prod01 ~]$ date
Wed May 31 21:45:01 CDT 2006
[CHI csmith@unix-prod01 ~]$

I don't have an OS X machine handy since I didn't bring my iBook to work today, but I would imagine - and certainly *hope* - that OS X requires an admin user authentication before allowing the time to be changed.

I'm sorry I don't understand your crazy Windows ways.

It's got nothing to do with "Windows ways". Allowing unprivileged users to change the system time is security hole.

Actually, as I understand the reason that *nix lets users change the time is because they're not changing system time, they're changing their individual user time.

I don't understand what you mean by "individual user time". In Linux (and UNIX) normal users cannot change the time. Even "user friendly" distros like Ubuntu require the user to authenticate via sudo before allowing them to change the time.

I think you are confused.

Which, as far as protecting the system from dumbass users goes, makes a hell of a lot more sense than the Windows way.

Right. So explain to me again how *pretending* to let users change the time rather than saying either "permission denied" or "authorise yourself to continue" does a better job of "protecting the system" ?

Re:I'm not sure that's the question

[Jaseoldboss]

I gotta back you up on this one. According to Aaron Margosis.

Windows doesn't allow LUA users to change the system time. That is not a LUA bug, because changing the system time has security implications with respect to auditing and to the Kerberos protocol.

Also, Windows won't let your computer authenticate to a domain if your system time differs from the DCs time significantly.

I doubt it.

[grub]

Will Vista Run Your Games?

No... because I'll never install it!

Re:I doubt it.

[filesiteguy]

LOL!

Of course, the majority of people around will tell you you MUST install the Enterprise Premium edition in order to play the latest and greatest World of Grand Theft Sims in 3D. ...meanwhile you'll just fire up your system and continue to get real work done. :)

Re:I do not know if it will run my games or not bu

[GeckoX]

What a perfectly timely dig at MS there! How witty! I bow at your superior intellect! Your ability to slam MS in a way completely unattached to the article, but to do so in such a way as for it to be entirely on topic is commendable...NOT.

Vista is backward compatible...?

[__aaclcg7560]

I was under the impression that Microsoft wanted only Vista-only games to play on Vista. I'm sure it would be a pain in the butt to accomodate all the XP-related issues on top of the Vista-related issues.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[plague3106]

That would be pretty stupid, don't you think? MS might want you to upgrade, but they aren't going to render your previous games unplayable once you've done so.

People, if that were true, would not go to Vista, which means game studios wouldn't target DX10 either.

As it is, it will probably be a while before game studios target DX10; they actually do try to target the largest audience.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[__aaclcg7560]

Oh, I don't know... Is $600+ for a video game console or $60 per game is stupid?

Microsoft will be pressuring developers to create Vista-only games to force gamers and consumers to upgrade to Vista. This happened during the transition from Windows 98 to Windows XP.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[plague3106]

Oh, I don't know... Is $600+ for a video game console or $60 per game is stupid?

A computer isn't a game console that just plug in and have work. People are more relucant to upgrade their OS than buying another black box. And yes, $600 for a game console, when you can have a computer that can play games AND do other tasks, is stupid.

Microsoft will be pressuring developers to create Vista-only games to force gamers and consumers to upgrade to Vista. This happened during the transition from Windows 98 to Windows XP.

They can try to pressure all they want, but that doesn't mean it will happen. If the majority of the game studios audience isn't on Vista they, they simply won't target Vista. Its as simple as that.

I don't recall MS pressuring game studios on the move from 98 to XP, especially since for some people, the move was 98 to WinME. Thankfully, ME was short lived.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they will be pressuring developers to create Vista only games; but at the same time they are not going to be going out of their way to make it so that Vista can only run Vista only games.

Microsoft's goal is to get people to plunk down the money to upgrade to Vista, either by buying Vista or by buying a new computer. Vista-only games help this by providing a carrot to get people to upgrade. However, if somebody's favorite game does not run on Vista, that in effect discourages people from upgrading to Vista. Therefore, it would be moronic for Microsoft to go out of their way to break backwards compatibility.

Of course, that doesn't mean that they might break backwards compatibility; games tend to not be perfectly written and often they rely on sloppy behavior. It just means that Microsoft won't make breaking compatibility an explicit goal.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[Half a dent]

We all know that when Joe Average buys his new Dell/HP/Whatever sometime in 2007 it will come preinstalled with Vista. Plus MS will cease support for XP forcing upgrades as it gets more bug prone than ever.

Not all old games will work on Vista, a few new/popular ones will be patched after launch if there are more sales to be had or if there isn't a sequel planned for release soon. Pretty much the same story as on the 360 (not many games been added to their backward compatibility list since it first appeared - most of them new games with support written in from day one).

Microsoft lost interest in you playing games on your PC when they came up with the XBOX. Apart from a few niche games that wouldn't translate to the format - Flight Sim, Age of Empires, etc.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[__aaclcg7560]

I don't recall MS pressuring game studios on the move from 98 to XP, especially since for some people, the move was 98 to WinME. Thankfully, ME was short lived.

It wasn't a blantant "do this or die!" threat. It was more like a subtle "do this or die later!" threat. I was at Atari during that transition where I was handling the QA inventory. Within an year after XP came out, all the PCs were XP and only the compatibility lab had earlier versions of Windows. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing as XP supported games better. The message that filtered down from on high is that Microsoft was pushing for XP to get users away from 98. Getting developers to come out with exclusive content for Vista is just another way to get the upgrade cycle started.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[plague3106]

We all know that when Joe Average buys his new Dell/HP/Whatever sometime in 2007 it will come preinstalled with Vista. Plus MS will cease support for XP forcing upgrades as it gets more bug prone than ever.

You assume everyone is going to be buying a new PC in 2007. Most Joe Average's already have a PC. MS will end support for XP two years after Vista is available. XP has been getting more and more stable since its release. You act as if software rots, and more and more bugs will be introduced into a system where they weren't before.

Not all old games will work on Vista

This is true, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of games that run on XP will run on Vista. Do you also slam MS when they don't break backward compatiabilty because of a security hole?

a few new/popular ones will be patched after launch if there are more sales to be had or if there isn't a sequel planned for release soon.

If a game didn't sell well, why would they support it very long?

Pretty much the same story as on the 360 (not many games been added to their backward compatibility list since it first appeared - most of them new games with support written in from day one).

Um, the 360 hasn't been out that long, has it? And why would a game studio add support for the 360 when they know people still have the original Xbox which they can play the game on. You're blaming MS because companies aren't re-releasing the same old crap on the newer platfrom, which requires them (I'm inferring from your statement) to update the code? What a shock!

Microsoft lost interest in you playing games on your PC when they came up with the XBOX. Apart from a few niche games that wouldn't translate to the format - Flight Sim, Age of Empires, etc.

You start off by telling us MS will only release DX10 on Vista to force gamers to upgrade. Then you tell us that MS doesn't care about gaming on the PC. Which is it? DX isn't going anywhere anytime soon; they are continuting to release a managed DX API so that .Net programmers can use DX. They wouldn't put all that effort in if they didn't care about gaming on the PC. Its odd they they've already commited to Halo 2 (or was it 3?) on the PC (for Vista only), but they don't care about gaming on the PC.

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[Half a dent]

"You assume everyone is going to be buying a new PC in 2007. Most Joe Average's already have a PC. MS will end support for XP two years after Vista is available. XP has been getting more and more stable since its release. You act as if software rots, and more and more bugs will be introduced into a system where they weren't before."

Sure not everyone will buy a PC at this time true, but new PCs will be sold with Vista and with PCs becoming a consumer item the speed at which they are replaced seems to be increasing (from my experience with friends, family, colleagues, etc - may be bucking the trend?). Software does not rot although exploits if discovered can make it less reliable. Graphics cards and other replacement hardware may have less drivers for older systems as time goes on. Slightly off topic, I only recently retired a PC running Win 3.11 that was running a simple monitoring program off the network, not because it could no longer do the job but because the job was no longer needed - if you don't intend to change any software a PC will work until it dies.

"This is true, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of games that run on XP will run on Vista. Do you also slam MS when they don't break backward compatiabilty because of a security hole?"

I hope that you are right, but until we see Vista unveiled I guess neither of us will know.
Very good point - at what point does it become too costly (mainly in terms of time as Vista is delayed already) to implement a new way of doing something with backwards compatibility rather than losing some of the capatibility but being a more secure system. Security must come first, to me anyway. If this is the cause of some incompatibility then fair enough.

"If a game didn't sell well, why would they support it very long?"

Oh, I don't know, maybe loyalty to their consumers. Sorry this is the real world I know! No one expects everything to work but no one wants to have to buy all their software again either. Ideally allowing 3rd party access to source so someone could do it if they wanted would be cool but totally unlikely with regard to IP (can't blame them either but it would be nice!).

"Um, the 360 hasn't been out that long, has it? And why would a game studio add support for the 360 when they know people still have the original Xbox which they can play the game on. You're blaming MS because companies aren't re-releasing the same old crap on the newer platfrom, which requires them (I'm inferring from your statement) to update the code? What a shock!"

Probably because the 360 used code while the PS2 used hardwear to do the same thing. How many consoles do people want to have under the TV? It makes sense to be backward compatible so then at least you only have one from each manufacturer (if you must have them all that is). Realistically yes this is a pretty short term issue, how many PS1 games do people still play on their PS2s rather than a newer release in the same series? The PC's strong point over consoles has always traditionally been that you don't have to scrap your games when you buy another machine.

"You start off by telling us MS will only release DX10 on Vista to force gamers to upgrade. Then you tell us that MS doesn't care about gaming on the PC. Which is it? DX isn't going anywhere anytime soon; they are continuting to release a managed DX API so that .Net programmers can use DX. They wouldn't put all that effort in if they didn't care about gaming on the PC. Its odd they they've already commited to Halo 2 (or was it 3?) on the PC (for Vista only), but they don't care about gaming on the PC."

In terms of where Microsoft seem to be going I stand by that point. The 360 is where Microsoft are concentrating their efforts - not surprisingly because it is their hardware unlike the PC. In terms of numbers more people buy games for consoles than PCs so they wanted a part of that market. The PC is still there so developers are free to write games for it. But MS will write software for the

PS3

[neonprimetime]

Will Vista Run Your Games?

No, because Playstation 3 will!

It will NOT run my games

[scenestar]

with the perverse use of memory and the fact that my computer is about 1,5 years old
( cpu[1 x AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+ @ 2.09GHz] mem[Physical : 1012MB, 81.4% free] disk[Total : 300.21GB, 69.40% Free] video[nVidia Corporation NV31 [GeForce FX 5600XT] ) I can basicly give up all hopes of decent performance.

Re:It will NOT run my games

[DarthChris]

What on earth gave you that idea?
Vista's specs are high because they've factored in running antivirus, firewall, antispyware and other desktop stuff, particularly office. If you turn the eye-candy down it will pretty much run on any XP-capable machine. Besides, I would expect that while you're running a full screen game, windows doesn't draw the desktop etc anyway (I don't know for sure).

Re:It will NOT run my games

[snuf23]

I can see by your choice of a GeForce FX 5600XT that you should have already given up hopes of decent performance long before Vista.
I keed! Sort of. Upgraded to a 5600 Ultra from a 4400 and hardly noticed any performance increase.

Re:I'm glad they confirmed this myth...

[jeriqo]

It's Vista vs XP not AA vs not AA

DirectX10 and the XP support cycle

[phorm]

Given the current trend towards various countries/continents/etc pushing for MS to modify their OS for unbundling purposes, etc... what would be the scenario around the "forced upgrade" for use of DirectX 10?

XP is still within the support cycle for MS. DirectX 10 could be seen as an upgrade or update for Windows OS's. Therefore, should MS not be supporting DX10 on XP?

I'd imagine that when Vista comes out, if things start requiring DX10 we may see a certain amount of political pressure against our favorite monopolist to backport proper support.

Starforce doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
The latest stealth action thriller from Ubisoft doesn't work in Vista, but it's probably not any fault of the application itself - it's the StarForce copy protection
[...]
We were unable to find any sort of workaround or Vista-ready driver on the StarForce site.

Then just ask reloaded for their fully-reversed crack ! Everyone told you DRM was defective by design !

my question

[Blob Pet]

How long will it be before the games I buy require Vista? Seeing that I only boot into XP when I want to play certain games, I have absolutely no desire to install Vista.

Re:my question

[Sarusa]

Pretty soon. MS Studio/Published games will be DX10 only... and DX10 will only be on Vista because they need every trojan horse they can get to force you to 'upgrade' to this bloated Edsel of a 'Clippy the OS'.

Third party games should still be DX9 for a while. After that... well screw it. Console only.

Re:my question

[Tibor the Hun]

Exactly.
That's why I've given up on Valve. They're MS OS exclusive, and I really have no interest in supporting a company with such a narrow business plan.

id, Blizzard have the right approach when it comes to OS support.

Re:my question

[drsmithy]

That's why I've given up on Valve. They're MS OS exclusive, and I really have no interest in supporting a company with such a narrow business plan.

Good advice. I'd never support a company whose business plan was so narrow as to only target ~95% - 99% of their potential market, either.

Re:my question

[Tibor the Hun]

You can say that again!

Re:I'm glad they confirmed this myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to XP, smart guy.

Re:I'm glad they confirmed this myth...

[Ender Ryan]

Wow. Just wow. Holy fucking wow.

Way to get moderated up for being a complete dipshit.

Re:I do not know if it will run my games or not bu

[idonthack]

Why is this modded Troll? Offtopic, maybe, but not Troll.

Re:I do not know if it will run my games or not bu

[GeckoX]

Flamebait? Hardly.

Baited myself? Quite.

Only on /. would the gp's post NOT be considered flamebait and calling someone out for taking a discussion about whether a new OS from MS would handle games well or not and trying to turn it into Yet Another MS Bashfest based on a simple "I Won't Be Using It" statement as if it is gospel and has ANYTHING to do with the discussion WHATSOEVER wouldn't be flamebait.

Go ahead, mod into oblivion, I know you want to. Enjoy.

If you think that that is bad read this

[Joe The Dragon]

Paul Thurrott review of compatibility for bata2 http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_beta2 _04.asp 64-Bit (x64) Support is worse http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ff_x 64.asp Also Does UAP get in the way of in game updateing? Will M$ be able to make UAP work with games copy Protection / cheat Protection ?

Re:I do not know if it will run my games or not bu

[Anonymous Coward]

buffer overflow: sentence too long

Not if, but when

[dkone]

Everyone so far has commented on "why should I upgrade, if XP is fine, etc..." The real question is, and we should start a pool, "When will you be forced to upgrade to Vista?" It starts slowly, with DirectX 10 not going into XP. From there it is only a matter of time till all games will soon require DirectX 10. I am picking 7/1/2007 for my pool date.

DK

of course it will!

[syrinx]

It will run all these games with no problem! And obviously you'd never want to play anything else.

Re:I'm glad they confirmed this myth...

[nahdude812]

AA rendering only does multiple renders for polygon edges since there's little to no advantage to rendering multiple pixels for a dot that's on the middle of a poly. It actually doesn't affect framerate very much typically (certainly not 2-8 times slower), as long as you have a card with support for this feature. Shooting from the hip, I'd say I expect 26-28 FPS from a scene with 4x AA turned on, vs 30 FPS w/o AA.

Re:I do not know if it will run my games or not bu

[Anonymous Coward]

I think even worse than the "M$ is bad" knee jerk posts are the "Oh, you are so witty and intelligent" sacastic posts that follow. For the record, your post was just as stupid and pedestrian as the GP. Now, go fuck yourself.

Re:I'm glad they confirmed this myth...

[kannibal_klown]

Depending on how high you turn AA on or how beefy your system is, you're talkng about a much bigger hit than 2-4FPS out of 30. You'll only ever see a small hit if you turn a low-pass anti-aliasing on like SSx2, or if you're machine is so powerful that running the game as-is doesn't doesn't even make your system swet. And chances are, if you're running at a sustained 30 FPS, you're machine is struggling.

Look at some benchmarks and find some reviews for modern cards. Look for a game that taxes the systems: ie, for a 7800GT don't look at Q3 or benchmarks but Doom3 at 1280x1024. Usually they'll show a graph of the system running at a high enough resolution that it's no longer "cruising" through (struggling, but just barely). Then they'll show another graph (or a sub-graph) of the same resolution but at different Anti-Aliasing levels. You'll see that graph drop lickety-split.

So sure, I can play an Unreal 2004 based game at 1280x1024 with AA turned way up and not see a difference in FPS (and have a nicer image). But if I'm playing a taxing game like Doom 3 (or Half-Life 2 at a high resolution) then the AA drops the performance nicely. And as I mentioned , if I have a low-pass Anti Aliasing going then the difference won't be as great as if I put on AAx8

DX10 question

[DarthChris]

MS officially announced (some time ago) that there would be a SP3 for XP, and that it would contain some of Vista's new API's etc. My wonder is that maybe they will stick DX10 in that, given sufficient community pressure?

Well, MS had to do something

[bogie]

Not a single respectable source or group is high on everyone moving to Vista. For now it is a solution in search of a problem. XP is "good enough", runs very well on 5 year old hardware, and is also pretty affordable.

Vista has high hardware requirements and even needs a GPU upgrade for DX10. It just isn't looking very compelling right now. I've been around the block a few times with MS and OS upgrades starting with Win 3.1. There are always people saying "what does X offer over what we are already running?". That just happens no matter what, but even with that being said MS better pull a rabbit out its ass in order to get Vista where is needs to be. It's just not not there yet and they are running out of time to fix the bugs and get it polished. I'd rather they wait till next summer instead of coming out with another Windows ME.

Re:Well, MS had to do something

[drsmithy]

Vista has high hardware requirements [...]

Vista doesn't have particularly high hardware requirements (I was surprised they weren't higher). Even a mid-range PC from ~3 years ago is only likely to require a memory upgrade - (and even that's unlikely, in the case of an enthusiast) - and a "high end" PC ~5 years ago should be capable with a cheap video card upgrade.

That's assuming you want the fancy Aero interface, of course - if the "Classic" interface is good enough for you then anything back to about 7 years should be ok, maybe needing more RAM.

Any remotely serious gamer (ie: the context of this article) will have had a PC more than capable of running Vista for years already. Compared to the hardware requirements of current (and upcoming) games, Vista is a lightweight.

[...] and even needs a GPU upgrade for DX10.

So did DX9 and various other fancy new technologies like Pixelshader 3.0. Again, if you're a serious gamer, you'll already be planning (or have committed to) a video card upgrade, just to play games, that will be more than sufficient for Vista.,

No, it won't. Thanks. Next question, please.

[Tom]

I have yet to read even one reason why anyone should get Vista. Everything that was somewhat interesting when they were creating buzz around what was called Longhorn back then has since been stripped, leaving what behind? XP SP3, essentially.

Nobody will run games on Vista except for the folks who buy a new machine where it's pre-installed. Since that'll be no earlier than 2008 what exactly is the point of testing an incomplete beta version now?

Re:No, it won't. Thanks. Next question, please.

[jorgie]

You are either a troll or ignorant of the many under-the-hood changes in Vista.

Any one of the followoing is much more then a service pack:

UAP and all the related parts,
new network stack that fully supports ipV6,
movement of a lot of code from kernel mode to user mode,
new display driver model,

and many, many more.

Jorgie

DirectX 10

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess another reason for DirectX 10 to be Vista-only is so that you can't compare performance of games on Vista to games on XP or Windows 2000, etc...

Gimmie some support for the older stuff too!

[Dreamlandlocal]

I hope it does... but not just the catalog of XP games. Most of all I want it to run the games that were lost in the shuffle between win95/98 and winXP. For anything released back in the DOS days you can find a decent emulator (DOSbox, Scummvm etc) but for the Win95/98 years I'm left to tinker with the flakey compatibility modes in an effort to run some fairly decent titles!

A gaming revolution?

[Entropius]

Do we really need a PC gaming revolution? I dunno, but right now it seems like anything that developers can come up with, they can do already -- on WinXP, and on Linux if they cared enough.

It's not like there's some massive potential that can be unlocked by some new OS or related technology. The technology is fine -- now what we need is smart people writing good software. Arena.net's streaming software for Guild Wars? Now *that* is a revolution.

Linux, FTW?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is just a tad funny that, indeed, the possibility of Linux being more compatable then Windows Vista, almost laughable. Don't believe me, you say? See for yourself: http://www.winehq.com/?issue=310#Vista%20App%20Com patibility What one developer had to say: "Results: Client appcompat % hovering at 40% (GASP - INTERNAL INFO... better moderate this one out!!!!)" [...] He then goes on to say: "Wouldn't it be scary if Linux ends up more Windows compatible than Windows is! :)" On a slight offtopic note: Why in the hell did Bill Yates say, "I have too much money :cry:" when the matter of the fact is he is OUTSOURCING all the *#$*#*$)@* jobs of the country? Well, if there is karma, Bill is sure in for one HELL of a ride. ;) Good day, sirs.

Of course not! Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a console gamer, you insensitive clods!

Linux back-compat? You make me giggle

[tepples]

Linux is probably the most backwards-compatible

Not for proprietary software, which most PC peripheral manufacturers seem to prefer. A proprietary device driver that uses the right subset of WDM can run on Windows 98se, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. Linux, on the other hand, changes the kernel ABI on every kernel version, and different distributions use different kernel versions.

DOS 3.3?

[tepples]

And I've seen programs designed for DOS 3.3 run under Windows XP.

Only because you've installed the AppleWin emulator ;-) (Apple had a product called DOS 3.3 long before Microsoft released MS-DOS version 3.3.)

Virtualization

[tepples]

Microsoft would LOVE to just break everything and start fresh, but there's no way anybody would upgrade if none of their programs ran on the new OS.

Unless Microsoft's new OS came with a copy of Microsoft's previous OS and a virtualizer. I seem to remember that Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.4 for PowerPC did something similar during the 9 to X transition.

Re:I'm glad they confirmed this myth...

[Gryle]

Hye, it's the Slashdot way :)