3 ms·
One minor note: " Direct3D 10, for example, only supports Windows Vista and Windows 7; it's not available on Windows XP. The continued widespread usage of the
by redthrowaway 15y ago
One minor note:
" Direct3D 10, for example, only supports Windows Vista and Windows 7; it's not available on Windows XP. The continued widespread usage of the old operating system makes it much harder for developers to depend on these new features: every time they do, they rule out the ability to sell to half of all current Windows users, and that's a bitter pill to swallow."
How many devs who would like to use the features offered in D3D 10 but not 9 are realistically going to be selling to people running XP? An outdated OS with outdated hardware and users who are behind the curve on upgrades does not seem to be a market that people implementing rich graphical features would be targeting.
- coffeeaddicted 15y agoI guess the best available survey for hardware used by gamers is from steam (http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=pc http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=pc). Around 20% are using XP there - still a hard decision if you want to ignore a fifth of your potential customers.
- redthrowaway 15y agoSteam's a bit weird, as it has a lot of games that run on lower-spec systems. Your point's a valid one, but I think Steam might be a bit of an oddity.
- Gormo 15y agoGamers are particularly reluctant to 'upgrade' to new versions of Windows, especially where there are major overhauls to the driver layer or DirextX. Doing so could break comptatibility with their existing library of games, or prevent hardware from working properly. SLI wasn't even supported under Vista for ~4 months after launch, for example.