Microsoft has claimed that DX10 has been required for the best experience in games like Crysis… except that by changing a few settings in an .ini file, you can get DX10 settings in DX9 on XP.

I’m not upgrading an OS for that.

Being perfectly honest, the only reason Alan Wake is going to be Vista exclusive is due to Microsoft footing the bill, not from anything the game actually stands to gain from Vista/DX10.

Which is hilarious, as according to Valve’s hardware stats, XP makes 80% of the millions of people who use Steam. Vista however only comprises of 17%. Way to limit your potential audience.

So, yeah. Sadly, I don’t care about Alan Wake not because I’m not interested, but because it wouldn’t be worthwhile to. I’m a Windows XP user.

Most expensive game ever made is GTA 4 at $100 million.

Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/gta-iv-most-expensive-game-ever-developed

The cost of Superman Returns is a one off exception in the biz, as it went through many, MANY years in pre-production, where WB studios was paying numerous writers handsome sums of money to have cracks at different scripts, as well as “pay or play” contracts. These stipulate that if you sign an actor for a role in a movie, whether the studio ends up making that film or not, they still have to pay the actor what they would have paid them had it been made.

The cost of the Superman Returns film, not counting all of the nonsense from the other canceled versions of it, clocks in at $209 million.

Source: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117952909.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

The only film I can think of that even comes close to Superman Returns is The Dark Knight at about $150 million. All films fall well short of that, usually in the $60 to $120 range.

Now, for a whole bunch of techy stuff. To this day I still hear people bashing on Vista for the sole reason that it is Vista, all the updates, service packs and improved drivers be damned. We heard the exact same complaints of XP when it came out in 2002! with people woving to stay true to Windows 98 or NT 4.0 in light of performance problems and incompatibility. It did take six years of updates and newer, faster hardware for XP to reach the point where it is today, while it took Vista only about 18 months to reach the level of polish and quality of XP. That’s not even touching on the security advances made in Vista which are literally impossible to do in XP and not even mentioning the more robust and efficient graphics system in place which literally has saved my work by not crashing the computer when a graphics driver acted up.

As for the Xbox 360, it’s not “DirectX 9.0c” as much as it’s a DirectX-like programming environment.
For instance, the “tesselator” unit in the Xbox 360 is not the same as the tesselator unit in DirectX 10-capable graphics cards, which is every card since the Geforce 8-series and Radeon HD 2000 series.
Much of the technology developed for the Xbox was later ported over to Windows XP and Vista such as the audio and game controller systems.
DirectX 10 itself was first concieved in 2002-2003, I believe, and encompasses a very lengthy and in-depth discussion between Microsoft and the entire games and graphics industry of what was desired and needed in tomorrow’s games. This initial discussion led to a long and thorough development time which resulted in a clean, useful API with significantly less overhead compared to previous versions.
Simply put, DirectX 10 enables you to do the same thing in less time, so to speak, than DirectX 9, allowing you to fill the “rest” with other things, which allows for much more detailed and fancy graphics.

All in all, DirectX 10 is not Xbox 360, Vista is not something the dog hocked up on the kitchen table, and anyone who says anything to the contrary should sit down and play with a properly updated Vista and see for themselves what’s what instead of following the anti-hype.

I have used Vista daily for the last six months, and going back into XP for anything feels about as unappealing like overcooked broccoli.
And don’t frget. Games are entertainment. Scary, sexy, happy, funny and odd. Enjoy them instead of bickering about them!

Games don’t cost more than movies. Not even close. I think the most expensive game ever made (at least as of last year or so) was 70 million, and that was Shenmue. The new Superman movie cost ~325 million dollars.

Fine, it’s going to be awesome. Despite the long-necked waitress the character models are going to be adequate, because the story will add so much colour. It will not degenerate into a last section alien\mutant\zombie clichéd ending and the graphics will be on par with Crysis, but run on my Grandma’s microwave.

Better?

@simon
Whilst I don’t agree with not having Vista meaning you can’t afford to keep up with PC gaming (being a low-budget gamer myself), I agree with everything you say about Vista.

When I bought my computer several months back, I had to make the decision. Either I could go with XP, or I could pay £10 more, be able to take full advantage of DX10, be 64bit compatible and be future proof for at least a year longer.

I still don’t recommend people upgrade from XP, but when you next need a new OS there is nothing to really hold you back.

2. Vista haters are a bunch of twats who live in the past, their mouths (and fingers) endlessly regurgitating someone else’s opinion that vista is gaming shite, without their brains getting involved at all. If you think that vista slows down your gaming to unacceptable levels then you can’t afford to be a PC gamer.