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Valve Says Choice to Make DX10 Vista-Only Hurt PC Gaming

Posted by Zonk on from the they're-in-a-place-to-know dept.

Erris writes "Valve's President Gabe Newell is calling Microsoft's choice to make DirectX 10 Vista-only a 'terrible mistake' that has harmed gaming. His company's latest hardware study shows the strategy has not moved gamers onto Vista. The result is that almost no one is using the newest version of DirectX, and companies are shying away from creating new input devices that support it. Nine months after release, after Christmas, after graduation, and with school mostly back in session, still only 8% of gamers are using it." Update: 08/27 21:09 GMT by Z : An AC points out that these numbers may be framed poorly given uptake numbers for XP's release.

4 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Too bad Valve. by IPFreely · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There is a lot more going onin DX10 than games. The whole driver-OS interface was changed. Those changes were necessary to put the 3D hardware into sharable mode.

    Now multiple applications and games can share the 3D hardware. In DX9/WinXP and earlier only one App at a time could use the 3D hardware. It needed to be done, and it could only be done with the cooperation of the OS. This cannot be put back into XP because this sort of control and separation could not be done in XP.

    --
    There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
  2. Re:XP unable to support dx10 or what? by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oddly enough there are projects to make Vista games (Direct X 10 games) and apps run on Windows.

    http://alkyproject.blogspot.com/

    It can be done, but Microsoft just wants people to jump to Vista. I think they are barking up the wrong tree. Gamers who want the best possible performance aren't going to jump to an OS that eats more resources and slows their rig down. I'll consider buying a Direct X 10 game the moment Wine/Cedega supports it.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  3. Win-Win for Microsoft. by guidryp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    People are forced to go to Vista if they want DX10. Win.
    PC gaming is further messed up and more people go to console (Xbox). Win.

    The downside for Microsoft is what? People pissed with Microsoft tactics? Yeah that would be new...

  4. Why OpenGL should have been the de facto standard by John+Hansen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With a thorn like this in Microsoft's side, there is certainly a part of me that hopes that we will begin to see more OpenGL games released versus DirectX.

    Don't get me wrong, DirectX is a nice graphics library, but the seriousness of the vendor lock-in is just staggering -- and scenarios like this are a perfect example of a game development company's worst fears.

    This situation was created because not enough effort was put into OpenGL when it needed it the most to make it a truly cutting-edge standard. The blame for that particularly lies with Microsoft and their aggressive campaign for Direct3D (and DirectX). As a result, OpenGL languished for several years, with only incremental feature updates (to version 1.5, which IIRC wasn't even a real release, but more of a vendor patchset for 1.4). In the meantime, DirectX leapfrogged its way to version 9 with a ridiculous amount of features being added.

    OpenGL 2.1 finally came out last August (http://www.opengl.org/documentation/current_versi on/) to very little fanfare. About the only companies it really mattered to were the Xbox competitors, namely, Sony and Nintendo. The PC gaming industry as a whole didn't care, because they had a solution that was "good enough" -- DirectX 9.

    Now, OpenGL 3.0 is "on track" to be finalized at the end of this month. Whether that will happen is anyone's guess, but it looks like the DX10 situation has finally lit a fire under their collective asses. Who knows, we may even see an OpenGL 3.0 specification by September, but I'm not really holding my breath.
    http://www.opengl.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?u bb=get_topic;f=3;t=015351;p=0

    Of course, even though there's a brand spanking OpenGL almost ready to again kick Direct3D's ass performance wise, Microsoft has already taken steps to ensure that won't happen. OpenGL 1.4 (yes, 1.4!) is implemented in Vista as a translation layer to run Direct3D calls on the hardware. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D_vs._OpenGL#P ortability This cripples OpenGL's performance advantage. Of course, if you want to run the newest OpenGL on the newest hardware, as you should, they've put another roadblock in the way with Vista: you have to use the Windows XP drivers, which disable the nice flashy Aero interface. At this point, you're probably thinking, "Wait, wasn't Aero a selling point of Vista?" Well, that certainly makes sense. Only hardcore gamers would want to trade off their interface for OpenGL's performance, but your average casual gamer doesn't care.

    So even if OpenGL 3 is technically superior, publishers probably won't adopt it because of the widespread view that it's slow (thanks to Vista's emulation). iD Software will likely use it as they always have, but it'll become harder to explain to your average user why he needs to install unverified drivers and disable his nice flashy interface just so he can run said game.

    It's almost sickening, really, when you think about the damage DirectX has done.