Gno Schitt

Fairly old news but quite relevant due to the recent RTM (Release to Manufacturing) of Vista. This is really the only reason why I think I will be eventually upgrading. It's still going to be something I'm going to avoid for awhile though, I have no doubt that if I installed Vista the day it came out I would have the usual problems of missing drivers and broken apps. I have no problem waiting 6 months to 2 years for them to get that all sorted out.

I'll probably be perfectly happy mucking with the odd console game and the last generation of DX 9 games.

I know a few publishers are jumping at at the bit for DX10 but I can't see it being initially profitable when the current install base can't play them.I also know MS has a few other tricks up its sleeve to con people into upgrading. Halo 2 is supposed to get a PC release and it will be DX10 only. I fully expect the same will eventually happen with the recently released Gears of War.

There's an interesting problem with DX10/Vista vis a vis the gamer market...

If the initial install base is low (which is seems like it will be) and people are slow to adopt, then sales of games that are pure DX10 will be bad, and hence, not very profitable.

This will in turn force developers to continue making games for DX9/XP (which run on Vista also through the DX9L), which will in turn prevent people from feeling like they 'have' to switch to Vista, which will in turn drive the profitability of DX10 games down, which will...

you get the idea...

I'm subscribing to the same school of thought as Kyro here. I'm hopeing to get a Wii his weekend. I already have a hot machine in XP, and don't intend to switch over until I find a nice free copy I can use, or a game I can't live without comes around. However, I'm in a bit better of a situation, as I have an XBox360 at my house. I imagine most of the games that are DX10 will also have 360 versions. Which mean I can likely pick them up for that, instead of having to worry about Vista. Of course I also play Final Fantasy XI (the mmo one) and as far as I know, it doesn't even run under Vista yet... SO that's a big argument for me not to switch over.

That reminds me... doesn't the XBox360 OS use the current DX9c ? How the hell are they going to update that? Maybe the update for the 360 can be reverse engineered for installation in Win XP? Maybe I'm dreaming?

I think it does have DX9c on it.
And it looks phenomial for a lot of games (Gears of War). But that I think just makes a better case to not make things DX10 required. They already have a working copy in DX9... (for Gears anyway) why would you isolate a large market share to push people into a new technology? Makes me think of Sony with their forcing of Blu-Ray on gamers. People just don't like it. Of course I say that, but until I see a side-by-side of a game in DX9, on XBox360, and DX10, I'm not sold. If DX10 can give me better looking images, or as good with better performance, I could be convinced to be an earlier adopter. Of course the price to adopt legally could buy that second video card for my SLI setup, or another raptor to finish that RAID array (good bye load times!) both upgrades that may make more of an improvement on performance and image quality than the switch to DX10. If it's like Vista, and just a barely any better than previous version, well, much less inclined to switch.

As for reverse engineering the XBox update, I think your dreaming. You'd have to intercept it first, which may be ugly, and it will be very hardware specific, which may not be benefictial to many people. Also the XBox uses a shared RAM structure, with 512 megs (I think) RAM, and the software decides how much is for the vid card, and how much is for the app, which I don't see working too well on many (or any) PC's. I hope I'm wrong, and it's a joke to reverse engineer it, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm more optimistic for a fake directX10 layer to come out that just allows winXP machine to run the DX10 only games.

Don't forget that graphics hardware is also a factor between DX9 and DX10. The first DX10 cards have been recently released and they actually differ quite a bit from the previous generation. Most of the time the reasons for bumping up versions of DX don't do squat for the current generation of cards but rather to enable new features for the next-gen cards.

As far as the xbox360 is concerned its a fixed platform and thus it shouldn't need DX10 to enable new hardware features (assuming everything on the console is already enabled). That being said it wouldn't surprise me if it gets bumped up simply to make porting between it and PC's easier.

By the way how loud is your xbox360? My roommate has one and I find its louder than my PS2, server, and regular computer combined.

BTW - there will NEVER be an update for the XBox360 to true/full DX10, Google it, you will see. Which makes me wonder, why the hell would Microsoft release a piece of hardware that it was going to make obsolete on its own within 12 months. Makes you shake your head. Like this Zune nonsense, what a joke.

It is a fairly loud system, but when it's on, it's playing something, and usually the sound of the game easily drowns it out. For some of the more atmospheric games, where there isn't constant sounds, it's noticeable, but since it's noise constant, it doesn't bother me. Usually the worst of it is when it's loading too, which honestly, who cares.

I find it quite comperable to some gaming PC rigs, depending on your case, and cooling setup. One of my roomates had an entire acrylic case (like 1cm think) which was brutal for heat and as a result he had to fill it with fans, and it was a noisy noisy beast.

About that Zune nonsense, I assume you've seen about it's somewhat incompatability with Vista. I find it very humorous that the IPod, which isn't MS's product will likely be easier to set up on Vista than MS's product. Talk about backwards.

I read an interview with a game developer who suggested that it takes 5 to 6 years for the market to adopt a new OS to the point where game developers can stop supporting that OS. Since Vista and DX10 work hand in hand, you can expect game developers to support DX9/XP for a long time to come.