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DirectX 10 Only On Vista
Next Generation is reporting that DirectX 10 will only be released for Windows Vista. Those of us puttering along with XP will have to make do with 9. From the article: "The exclusivity of DirectX 10 means that in order to enjoy the high-end features of next-generation GPUs, gamers will need to adopt Vista. Some end users are upset with Microsoft, as the move effectively forces gamers to buy Vista if they do intend to remain serious about cutting-edge PC gaming." It may even be worth it for titles like Crysis.
How will DirectX 10 compete with OpenGL for game developer mindshare? With news of version 10 does the DirectX featureset now dwarf OpenGL's (if it didn't already)? Are there any amazing revelations coming to OpenGL anytime soon?
As an interesting side note Vista has to disable Aero when a Java app runs. As soon as the app is closed the Aero interface is re-enabled. Did Microsoft do this on purpose, or are Java widgets really that proprietary?
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Vista would ensure a nice system that is known to work well and would limit your QA costs by limiting your hardware.
Doing something that cuts your QA costs isn't such a good move when it cuts your potential revenue by multiples of your entire budget.
If Vista uptake occurs at the same speed as XP uptake, writing a Vista Only game would make as much sense as writing a Linux Only game for quite a while. Microsoft has a chicken and egg problem. Game exclusivity could speed Vista adoption, but Vista adoption has to be accelerated to get game exclusivity. The only way out of the situation is either patience, or much *much* more likely, strongarming developers. I'm betting Xbox 360 development will be contingent on agreening to make the PC version of your 360 game for Vista only. If that's true, it will become one of the many reasons that, no matter how good it is, nobody should buy an Xbox.
(Moderation Hint: There is no trolling or flamebait in this comment. I'm not trying to raise tempers or draw flames; I'm being serious.)
Ah, I've seen this coming for ages. The PC games market is bouyed up by those who stay on the cutting edge only - your average Joe doesn't stand a chance of having a PC that you could run a modern game on... take a random family with a PC and a random game from the full-price shelves and see how much fun it is to get it working at a decent speed.
I'm getting away from MS as much as I can because of crap like this. My computer, my rules... you wanna force rules on me, you don't come onto my computer. I just can't be bothered to play about with MS-based computers any more just to get a poxy game to run.
I don't care whether or not it offers new features or is given away free in cereal or everyone else in the world uses it, I'm keeping MS stuff strictly away from my own machines. I didn't want DirectX but numerous upgrades were forced on me by the games I wanted to play, and many of the upgrades killed performance or broke the install.
Each time, I still ended up with a game that performed better under OpenGL (almost any Quake/Half-Life based game for instance) or could EASILY have been replicated without using any sort of acceleration library satisfactorily (Age of Empires II springs to mind - nothing in it that NEEDS DirectX and still a massive performance slog through any sort of WINE or similar program and for what? A 2D RTS that shouldn't need ANY fancy stuff to do it's job - hell, DOS versions of Command & Conquer on an old Pentium 133 did the same stuff in similar resolutions without coming NEAR the CPU time used for AOE just to draw a screen on a 1GHz)
I work with MS systems all day long, spending half my time working around stupid quirks and things that should have been in the OS since day one. I get paid to do it there so I tolerate it and almost nothing uses DirectX, even though I work in primary schools. I don't tolerate the amount of setup needed to get a game running at home any more. Those machines that I have reserved as Windows "consoles" are treated as if they are plastered with strict disclaimers:
- Games only. Do not use for serious work.
- And old games at that, unless you feel like upgrading everything to get there and spend hours chasing patches, upgrades, updates, firewalls, drivers and controller setups just to play a crap game that you'll uninstall within a week.
- And even if you do that, there's no guarantee that tomorrow the game won't work because of an update, a new requirement, or something else killing performance to the point where it's unplayable.
In computing terms I'm now firmly considering myself an old fogie and haven't bought a game in a shop for years (unless you count a 50p copy of Warcraft in a local bargain bin), certainly not one I enjoyed playing.
I recently sold off about 75% of my back-catalogue on eBay because I realised I would NEVER play them again - some still had the wrappers on, a surprising amount had been played once and then uninstalled (Black & White, for instance, which I bought based on hype, played through until my creature was taken away from me and then promptly uninstalled... my brother did the exact same when I lent it to him afterwards). I'm sticking with my favourites and re-living some of the classics. Emulators, DosBox and remakes all the way.
If I want anything else, anything newer, I will buy a console. An old one at that. Secondhand with so many games bundled in that I could play forever, all for the price of a single full-price new PC game. If I can't afford a modern console and one game, I won't be able to afford the money for a PC that could run a modern game well enough, or the time to get it working, certainly not when you take into account how much I'd use it for because it WOULD be JUST a console in a fancy wrapper.
I decided a few years ago to not chase the latest and greatest and to stick to what's fun. Counterstrike is the only thing I can't really do on any other OS (My Linux PC's are just too slow to run it even under WINE but, strangely enough, more