As a sad coda to the happy-party we all had about the Just Cause 2 trailers a few hours back, word’s out that the unhinged free-roamer won’t work on Windows XP. It’s a DirectX10-only game, so even if you have a relatively recently 3D card you’ll need Vista or Windows 7 if you want to fire grappling hooks at planes. Probably, anyway – there’ve been several DirectX-10-on-XP projects, and though I confess I’ve not followed them closely, I’d be surprised if no-one comes up with a way to make this work. Anyone know where that stuff’s at now? Incidentally, before anyone takes the “get with the times, granddad” line and suggests most people have Vista or 7 now, take another look at January’s Steam PC survey. At 42.15%, Windows XP is still by far the most common operating system. That’s a crazy amount of potential customers to leave in the cold. I’d have more sympathy if it was specifically a PC game, but the 360/PS3 versions that will surely be the lead foot for JC2 won’t be DX10, so it seems odd that this should be. If it’s super-pretty and genuinely DX10ed to the hilt it’s good news, potentially, for those of us who are fully upgraded, but it’s an odd decision nonetheless.
Full system specs below – do you have the right hardware hats but the wrong OS trousers?
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