Future of games on Windows XP

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XP will be around for some time, believe me. I will make the permanent switch to Windows 7 soon, but I will keep a working XP on hand for emergencies. Being something of a classic gamer, I like to dust off my old games every so often.

Windows 7 may become a minimum requirement at some point, but for a very limited number of titles. Look what Blizzard are doing with StarCraft 2: It's DX9 only, and can run flawlessly on 5+ year old systems (with lowered graphics, obviously).

The point is that smart developers will try and make their potential customer base as big as possible, thus cutting XP out of the loop is short-sighted.
XP will be around for some time, believe me. I will make the permanent switch to Windows 7 soon, but I will keep a working XP on hand for emergencies. Being something of a classic gamer, I like to dust off my old games every so often.

Windows 7 may become a minimum requirement at some point, but for a very limited number of titles. Look what Blizzard are doing with StarCraft 2: It's DX9 only, and can run flawlessly on 5+ year old systems (with lowered graphics, obviously).

The point is that smart developers will try and make their potential customer base as big as possible, thus cutting XP out of the loop is short-sighted.
 
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jamus34

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I play a lot of older games and I haven't had any killer problems yet running in 64 Win 7.

And by older I'm talking about stuff that came out in early-mid 90's (Master of Orion, MOM, Xcom, etc.)

Only game I had issues with in XP (didn't try in 7 yet) was Nox. I could get it to run once on install and then it wouldn't run after that. And I tried everything. Need to try again in 7.
 
It is difficult to say when DX9 games will be phased out. DX8 was introduced in 2000 and it support was dropped beginning in 2006 with the introduction of Oblivion. DX9 was released in 2002 and seems to still be going on strong.

Game developers generally want to appeal to the largest consumer base as possible. Therefore, as long as a decent number of gamers are still using Win XP, then it is likely DX9 support will continue.

Best guess is whenever DX12 is release that will mark the demise of DX9 and people will be forced to upgrade. Why? In my opinion, I think developing games to be compatible with DX9, DX10, DX11 and DX12 is a bit too much for game developers to handle. It becomes too cumbersome to support 4 generations of DX.

 

10hellfire01

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All in all...lol...eventually XP, probably within next 5-10 years won't be the minimum spec anymore. Direct X 9 must also be nearing its end, like Jag said, Dx12 will probably change a lot of things. But then again, I think the economy is largely to blame for the lack of Dx10 and Dx11 games (Since they're obviosuly more expensive to produce and not many people now have killer PCs to run them).

I even just made this PC with Win7, and so far It's just like XP to me. I've had no issues and loved it (obviously skipped Vista). If you can make the jump to Win7 I think you'll be happy like me :D
 
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