Take a sample from technreport's review:

*DirectX 10.1 optimized version

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990/12

What will happen?
I believe besides ATI has the advantage I think we have better quality games and nicely priced video card. Look single 4870 can kill a GTX280 which is twice as pricey.

But I do believe all games will support on this in the future since this is the future. In the end its the user becomes the winner. I hope game makers support this call.

Good Quality, Best Price, Best Performance = what people really wants

I doubt we'll see more than 2 games that support dX 10.1 in the near future, Nvidia  said that it's worthless and won't support it so game developers don't have a reason to release games with 10.1.
 
Also I believe that Assassin's creed had 10.1 but Nvidia performance was really bad so they removed it!

If future games support DirectX10.1 then nVidia will be in deep shti.

Maybe they'll release it as an option, like they do with DX10 now.  
 
I can't believe I'm going to have to install Vista now that my 4870 is on the way, just to use DX10...

Nvidia currently does not have any card that supports Direct X10.1.

The problem is dx10.1 don't actually add eye candy, just optimization that was originally part of dx10 which ati cards benefit from. Game developers don't really care about about half the market getting better fps. To get the reputation that their game runs better on some computers is bad news for them. There's nothing to gain, only lose.

 
I hear that.
I have been holding firm on my no Vista stance till now.
With a pair 4850's on the way I decided it was time to give true DX10 a try.
If only someone could have patched it over to Xp    

Ask Micro$oft.

 
I respectfully disagree. If game developers see more people buying ATI cards, they will make games that use the DX10.1 standard. As for the reputation that their games work with one card company or the other better, that's been a known factor for years, as some games are tuned for ATI and others for Nvidia. The game developers mainly design their software for the biggest audience, and if the biggest audience buys Nvidia cards, then they build games for those cards. But if the card demographics change towards ATI, so will the developers.
 
As Heyyou27 points out, since Nvidia has made an issue of not supporting DX10.1, if there is a swing toward using that standard, Nvidia will find itself with a whole lot of cards that it can't sell, or at least will have a hard time selling.

Nvidia has the $$$ to keep DX 10.1 away for good.

 
Not sure I agree completely with your logic.
I am sure the developers would love to have as many people as possible be capable of playing their game with all the eye candy turned up.  Off hand I could think of 2 reasons why they might not be pushing DX10.1.
First off, I would bet that it is harder to code a game to switch between the two DX versions.  Probably not a big issue to work around but, with the small amount of 10.1 hardware on the market I could see this coming up during production.
Second would be the whole "The way it's meant to be played" thing.  With only 2 real choices in GPU's you really don't want to piss either of them off.  The GPU makers, especially nVidia, dump tons of resources into the gaming sectior to make sure their hardware will run the game as best as it can.  If a company decides to code all it's games in DX10.1 what do you think nVidia's reaction to that company will be?

Eventhough they dont support DirectX 10.1, maybe the next DirectX 11 has all its predecessor's package like 10.1
 
Yes, it is right to say they base its capability to where most users used for now.

LOL this is tooo funny. Hoping team A can actually slow progress for team A's sake LOL. How stupid is that? And, when team C shows up and tells lil team A to either go along or die, team A will have to do it. Now, either nVidia can get their crap together to advance tech , or they can play games and wait for Intel. Up to them. I see ATI moving on to at least make it uncomfortable when Intel dioes get here, and not all cozy like nVidia does as it does it its way, which is just sad

 
 
Thats what happens when you have the backing of the second largest CPU manufacturer, you don't want to give intel a break  
 
On the other hand I hope AMD doesn't abuse ATI's current position as diplomats for Intel.  

 
Which makes no sense, because that's simply making both companies have bad performance because one doesn't get a boost.
 
If every developer acted like that we'd be back in DX7 and using just single core 32 bit CPUs .

 
Unless it start gaining traction from another source. If others start to implement 10.1 then those that don't look like they are aren't up to the task, and that's far more detrimental than the idea that their title runs better on some computers (don't they all run better on one or the other?).  
 
The biggest barrier right now is that it's not only nV but also the biggest CPU company (intel) 's IGP products that are DX10 only, however with the terrible DX10 performance of the GMAs, I'm not sure how much that matters overall, it's just their dev influence that is important.

but nv would not allow them to support DirectX 10.1 with $$$$$
 

nV has no say in it if they are outbid.

Who's going to outbid them? AMD's broke.