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Gamers React to Vista Launch

Posted by Zonk on from the it-stinks dept.

As cranky as IT folks are about having to roll out new Vista installs, support them, update them, etc, gamers are matching them in irritation. Ars Technica recommends you dual-boot XP and Vista if you want to keep gaming on your PC. Voodoo Extreme explores Vista's crappy audio setup, while Computer and VideoGames reports that some small developers think Vista will ruin PC gaming (a comment we've heard before). C&VG does have a slightly more hopeful article up too, talking about the future of Vista gaming and what the new OS could mean for games ... once all the kinks are worked out.

10 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Xbox? by bcmm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe now that Microsoft has a console, we are supposed to stop gaming on PCs?

    Existing/in development Windows games are most easily ported to the Xbox, provided they use DirectX (which most do), so Microsoft doesn't really have much to lose if developers start to write fewer games for Windows.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    1. Re:Xbox? by sqlrob · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It has *nothing* to lose.

      You don't have to pay MS royalties for a Windows game. You do for a 360 game. Which do you think MS prefers would be published?

    2. Re:Xbox? by Sancho · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly.

      Windows will have a place in the business world for some time, and certainly on the desktop in commodity PCs. Microsoft is in no danger of losing what is arguably their flagship product (though some would argue that Office is their bread-and-butter).

      Now they want market dominance in consoles. With PCs as gaming systems, they are competing with themselves for dominance (Xbox vs PC), and they flat out don't get any royalties for games sold on the PC. They know that they have dominance on the PC even without gaming, so the easiest way to gain console dominance is to try to move people off of the PC and onto the Xbox.

      Now I don't think they'd blatantly sabotage gaming on Windows--certainly, they're using gaming as leverage for Vista upgrades via DirectX 10. But they probably won't work to maintain it as a viable platform for that much longer. DirectX 10 represents the start of a merger between the SDKs for Xbox and PC. I suspect that soon, we'll see the SDK for the Xbox start to become more advanced than the PC version. Eventually, the main optimizations and improvements will go to the XBox.

      Sneaky people, if this is their strategy, but effective. The PS3 is looking more and more like it's going to flop, and the Wii targets a completely different market (though it's catching up to the 360 in sales, regardless, and despite being released a year later). They've got a virtually clear path to hardcore console gaming dominance.

  2. sound information by archen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One of the articles says that hardware acceleration is no longer available in Vista, but doesn't say why (aside from the fact that MS didn't include it in their sound layer rewrite). Is this mainly a DRM thing?

    Might be a bit ironic if these sound cards target MS operating systems only to have Linux (and Mac?) being the only ones that support the hardware acceleration.

    1. Re:sound information by KermodeBear · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It appears that Creative is writing a driver that will intercept DirectSound calls and translate them into OpenAL calls, which Vista WILL support.

      --
      Love sees no species.
  3. Not that bad... by aikouka · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I already use Vista and I still game. I have absolutely no issues, albeit everything's still a little bit slower at the moment (nVidia never had mature G80 drivers for XP, why would I expect mature Vista drivers ;)). For me, Vista isn't just about my gaming experience, I want my entire PC experience to improve and I think Vista does that well. I could easily throw my old hard drive back in (with the XP partition still available) and go back, but I don't want to. Vista may have its oddities (UAC stopping programs from saving their settings, etc), but overall I'm satisfied.

    Do I think people should upgrade? Maybe, if they really want to. If someone's building a new gaming rig, I'd say to just upgrade now and get it over with. Unfortunately, I planned my new rig a couple months ago when Vista was coming out. Then it was delayed and I ended up having to purchase a copy of Windows XP to put on it. So I now wasted $120 on Windows XP that I don't even use anymore. Why would anyone want to do that (keep your piracy comments to yourself)?

  4. Vista in just 2 URL's by Idaho · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection - and yes, an increased cost of video cards is very much relevant to me as a gamer - as is bad sound support, such as lack of EAX.

    The completely spin-doctored reaction by Microsoft didn't help much. Be sure to read the comments on that one..they're basically getting slaughtered on their own weblog.

    Just a highlight I'll quote here:

    Question: Will the Windows Vista content protection board robustness recommendations increase the cost of graphics cards?

    Answer by MS: evades the question, but suggests the answer is no.
    Answers from an ATI presentation:

    "These costs are passed on to the consumer"

    "This cost is passed on to all consumers"

    "This cost is passed on to purchasers of multimedia PC's"

    "Costs are passed on to consumers"

    "Costs are passed on to consumers, especially early adopters"
    Says it all for me, really.
    --
    Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
  5. Vista? Who cares? by amuro98 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Vista is just a conspiracy between Microsoft and the hardware companies to get everyone to spend at least $500 on hardware for an OS no one really needs.

    Could someone PLEASE explain to me why it is that Aero NEEDS a 128MB video card when it doesn't do anything beyond what Stardock.com's Object Desktop has been doing for the past 8 years!?

  6. Gameport = pwn3d by rizzle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's one reason: Microsoft dropped support for the gameport.

    Before I say why this means a lot, let me say that I've been playing a lot of Battlefield 2 lately, a game in which using a joystick makes it much easier (and more natural) to flying all the fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft in the game. I've dug up my MS Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro joystick to play the game and let me say it's every bit as good as it was when i first got it.

    IMHO, the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback joysticks are some of the best joysticks ever made. Their force feedback system used cables rather than springs and rubber bands so they are extra sturdy and hard to break. Anyone who's owned one of these joysticks knows what I'm talking about.

    Obviously, the normal reply is "Get a new joystick!" Maybe it's just me, but I can't deal with the fact that all current joysticks look so ridiculous (*cough* Saitek), with all their colored plastic bits etc. Hell, owning a joystick is nerdy enough, but why does it have to scream "Don't come near me!!!" ?

    Here's an interesting thing. So the gameport *is recognized* by Vista, and when it tries to find drivers for it, it locates "Creative Game port" (I have a Sound Blaster card) and starts installing it when it fails by saying that the INF file is incorrect.

    Anyway, that's why I'm still dual-booting into XP :)

  7. Re:Vista Works for Me by WiiVault · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I suspect you may be alittle rosey about this considering that you went in at midnight. No SLI, no hardware audio, tons of DRM and signed drivers. No way is this better than XP at this point for any gamer (or even most general users).