Sorry for the late reply to the thread but I was in Deadmonton and then making the most of the last few days of snow.
gamerk316 :
FAiling to see the point; Devolopers HATE split API's with a passion. Yes, you could simply encapsulate every DX11 function in an If-Else clause to have a DX10 codepath if DX11 isn't avaliable, but it adds to code (DVD games are already approaching their 9GB limit, and more disks = less profit) and means extra work needs to be done to both the code itself, testing with diffrent setups, etc. Its not 3 hours of work to add a DX11 code path, more like 300 (coding, peer review, revisions, peer review testing, revisions, peer review, testing, etc).
I understand what you're saying, and I SEE your point, I just don't aggree with it anymore than I did with with it last time, nor those who said it about Win98SE when XP came out and made the Win2K/XP path king 2 years later. The difference being, if you're limited in time and space, then it's far FAR easier to drop the XP path than to drop the DX11 Vista tack on. XP+DX9 is far FAR more of a resource hog to developers for your scenario than than just the move to add DX 11. But you don't see that it's not an either/or option, it's something where DX11 most of the resources are suken costs to DX10, so the effort and ROI is easily justifiable, XP is title and market dependant. You make it sound as if it's an imposibility and as if it's anywhere close to the situation we had at the Vista / DX10 launch.
[/quote]Until XP drops below 20% market share, it makes no sense to sell a product with a handful of extra features that could potentally lose 20% in sales as a result of coding to a DX10+ standard.[/quote]
Unless that tiny market costs you a significant amount of dev time and delays yours product to market. If Crytek, Dice, Epic or Valve were launching a new title the effort required to code for XP's single DX9 path would be a huge investment of time and resources, while the DX11 tack on would be part of the standard development and give people a way forward for many (like unlockable content) whereas the XP fallback is an unused option for 80+% of the market for your scenario.
Throw in the lag in the general public aquiring DX11 hardware, and the difficulty of having to ensure three seperate graphic API's work (Plus three OS codepaths, XP running DX9 and Vista/7 running either DX9E, DX10, DX10.1, or DX11) and you see why its so easy to simply stick with DX9.
No, it's not, you make it sound like adding DX11 and Vista are optional, and they're not Vista is required for any new game period, thus a sunken cost, so the difference at worst is XP+DX9 vs VISTA's added DX10.1/DX11 work. And the two don't come close to comparing for resources. BTW, what's this third OS codepath? Win7 will be like the XP/Win2K path, interchangeable.
Using your logic, we'd be seeing a heck of a lot more DX10.1 games, considiering 10.1 is such a minor addition to DX10.
No we wouldn't, because there was a disconnect on the adoption of DX10.1, nV didn't want to play with ATi & S3 so that's created a much cleaner break than DX11 while where both ATi & nV's next hardware will be equal in that respect. Based on your logic there should be NO DX10.1 features in any titles, because there's more than 20% of users on XP and much more than 20% on DX9 hardware let alone DX10.0.
In short, developers for games could care less about "the enthusiast crowd". They want to make money, and coding to DX9, and spending only minimal time on advanced DX features, is the best way for developers to do that.
In short, you're dead wrong!
Many big title developers DO care about the Enthusiast crowd, and the Performance crowd, both of which BUY games in large numbers and are the CORE of PC gaming. Those who would reject a game because it requires Vista aren't those who consistently buy new titles and pre-pay to make sure they have it. Those are the people the developers want, not those who stick to XP and DX9 hardware forever and buy their titles when they go down to $9.99 in the discount bin. And even for those gamers, by the time and DX11 title reaches the discount bin that gamer would likely be moving to Win7 and a cheap DX10 card anyways. This is the same split as Win98SE or AGP vs PCIe, eventually they simply become irrelevant to new income.
Those developers that would focus their efforts more on the XP crowd are the traditionally low requirement strata like SIMs, WOW, and EA Sports franchises, that rely on the sales of a low-end install base who wouldn't be classified as PC 'gamers' so much as people who play a game or two on PCs, not the big title launches of new games / franchises which have always pushed the envelope. And most of those low-end people not in the WOW market are moving to consoles anyways.
I'm not saying there won't be XP titles and those titles that support XP and DX8 & 9 vs anything DX10 based, but those are the same ones that basically just dropped Win98 support, like NHL08 had last year and NHL09 just switched to XP/Vista-only.
What you're saying is not that balance of understanding, you say that no-one will put that minimal effort into DX11, going so far as saying there's no point to DX10, which is ridiculous! Just as ridiculous as hoping for a DX10 port for XP from a random 'group' as if they have more time and motivation for free than the developers who actually see ROI. [:thegreatgrapeape:5]
You talk about DX11 as if it's this huge undertaking, and about Vista as if it were still the pariah it was at launch, when in reality the bigger barrier for developers is not taking on DX11 to their already MUST have Vista workload, so much as the far bigger effort of adding XP support to the those dwindling ranks who are not expanding but gettting smaller all the time. Not every game, nor even most of the games will be DX10.1 or DX11, however, many of them will be, and unlike what you're saying, it's not going to be as hard a step into DX11 as it was into DX10+Vista.
Anyone who would consider themselves a PC
GAMER who buys new games when they're new (not playing just CS for the past decade) now has at least DX10 capable hardware, and likely either has Vista or has been waiting for a reason to switch once it improved enough. That time has come, and it will be only more ripe months from now when DX11 hardware shows up.
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