I'm Gonna Wait

[Spino]

The DX10 feature set itself will not merit a beefy power supply, it is the arms race between Nvidia and ATI combined with the overzealous attitudes of game developers that has driven 3D chip power consumption to ridiculous extremes. I'm sure DX10 compatible budget cards and integrated video chipsets with their typically low power requirements will be able to run Vista well enough. They won't be able to play cool games worth a damn but that's always the plight of budget hardware users.

MS' Vista venture is really rubbing me the wrong way...

Vista and DX10 may be on track for release by Spring 2007 but I firmly believe both MS and game developers are going to be seriously disappointed with the public's reception of the new OS. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of PC users do not need a new OS. Furthermore who in their right mind will want to pay $200 to upgrade to an OS that is, in terms of functionality and stability, no different from its predecessor? This is not the pre-XP days when most PC users sported systems running Win98, Win98SE or WinMe and bluescreen crashes, system freezes and horrendous driver issues were an everyday fact of life. For most users Win XP SP2 runs like butter and is rock solid stable. The only way Vista is going to penetrate the market in substantial numbers is through MS' adamant refusal to sell anything but Vista to PC makers (who will no doubt ****** and moan thanks to its less than stellar performance on less powerful budget hardware).

What really irks me is how MS is forcing users to purchase Vista just so they can use DX10. Do they really expect us to believe that DX10 couldn't be integrated into XP? This is as they say, a 'dick move'.

MS's delusions regarding Vista is a sign that it is suffering from ivory tower syndrome and only illustrates its arrogance when it comes to dealing with consumers. The sensible thing to do would be to milk WinXP for a few more SP packs until even low end PCs are capable of running Vista with nary a hiccup.

Last but not least MS's refusal to support DX8 & DX9 and their insistence on coercing PC gamers to purchase Vista just so they can use DX10 will only help to pound several more nails into the coffin we know as the ever shrinking PC game market.

I believe it will be at least two to three years before the public warms to Vista and its market saturation via new PC purchases will make gamers finally bite the bullet and upgrade. Until then developers will simply have to sit back and cater to the existing DX9 crowd.

I agree with Drone, perhaps this DX10/Vista nonsense might give way to a resurgence in OpenGL games.

(Language - Beirut)

[gunslinger]

When you take games out of the equation, there is truely no reason to upgrade pc computing power. A five year old computer is perfectly well suited for the normal jobs a computer is used for: word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, and web-browsing (although maybe not for downloading crazy amounts of video). An old computer should even do fine for editing / printing photographs, although a newer, souped up computer may be needed for video editing.

The only legitimate reason I can come up with for upgrading Windows is to close up the multitude of loopholes used by malware. However, I'm not too confident that Vista will be up to that challenge anyway.

Eventually, the public is going to get wise to this. At some point the majority of gamers are going to look at the option of purchasing a $2,000 system (or maybe even a $1,200 system) so that they can buy the newest $60 game and say, "Screw it, I'll keep my old computer and spend a couple hundred bucks on a console instead." I say this even though I haven't owned a console since the Atari 2600.

I will miss the days of the strategy PC game, one genre which I believe the consoles can't compete, but I accept the fact that it is coming sooner than later.