The People Behind DirectX 10

ThinSkin writes "In the first of a three-part series covering the people behind the new DirectX 10, ExtremeTech interviews Microsoft's David Blythe and Chris Donahue to discuss the development, decisions, and future of the new API. They answer several questions such as how different it will be than DX9, why it will only be for Vista (and not for XP), and when we might be able to see it."

Comments

Re:What obligation?

[kihjin]

Your thought process is familiar... Oh, it sounds like Microsoft's marketing strategy.

Microsoft's obligation is as an ethical business. Perhaps there is no legal binding which requires them to backport all their software, but they've been so legacy happy in the past! Why not now? Because they know that Vista is essentially worthless. Sure, it may have a better privilege system (Thanks UNIX!) and, well... honestly, I don't think anyone really knows for sure anymore.

Microsoft users are going to wonder: Why do I need Vista?
Microsoft's answer will be: So you can play Half-Life 4.

Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP?

[kihjin]

Well, I take it you weren't one of the few people to dish out the $200 (or however many hundreds of dollars it costs) for a licensed copy of XP. I'm not saying that I did.

What I am saying is that Microsoft shouldn't simply ignore it's XP consumer base. I feel this is a mistake.

Vista's biggest competitor will be XP (assuming Vista is released in the next 15 years). What better way to "encourage" users to the new platform by designing an API (which will undoubtedly be adopted by countless game publishers) that only works on Vista?

But like you said: it's not a stability or security update, so no big deal. It'll just end up being the most expensive DirectX upgrade of all time.