MS Opens Xbox Live to the PC

[Scott Tortorice]

Xbox Live and Windows Vista (http://www.gamesquad.com/index.php?option=com_sections&id=9&sid=812)


This seems like a really good idea to me! There is a tremendous amount of synergy that I think could be captured by bringing console and PC gamers together.

[jayedub7423]

xbox live is great, but it's not enought to get me to buy Vista. but, if i would like to play somne of those fancy DX10 games, but i dont think the pain of Vista is worth it at this time.

[Don Maddox]

Any new operating system is going to have issues because of drivers. This isn't MS's fault and they can't write drivers for the products.

I, too, am waiting a short while for these teething issues to be worked out. But not upgrading to Vista won't be an option for most serious gamers. The lack of DX10 will eventually be a showstopper as more and more games will require it.

[Dion]

Whats Dx10? Sounds like a new requirement. More precisely a new kind of wrench that they can throw in my wargaming mechinitions. I worked my ass off just to be able to play the cutting edge computer wargames. Not to mention I spent a whole lot of money, and most importantly I spent a whole lot time just learning how to play comptently. I had a X-box and currently own a Game Cube, and I'm pretty sure a wargame was never made for those consoles, and I don't think any wargames was ever made for any of the other consoles either. Dx10 sounds very important to gaming. Now it sounds like I'm going to have to buy another X-box and go through the drudgery of making it compatable with my computer. What ever Dx10 is, I hope it's downloadable to computer users, and I hope you don't have to have a X-box running in the background.

[Don Maddox]

In layman's terms, DirectX is an important type of standardized code for handling multimedia tasks in Microsoft software applications. In essence, game developers use this to program new games.

Every few years Microsoft releases a more powerful version of DirectX with additional/enhanced features so that more sophisticated games game be made. DirectX has been around since 1994 and Windows 95. New versions have been released regularly since then, and the newest version is DirectX 10.

Normally you can download the latest version of DirectX and update Windows, but DirectX 10 will not be backward compatible with Windows XP. So if you stay with Windows XP, DirectX 9.0c is as high as you can go.

Right now it's not really an issue since there are no games yet that take advantage of DirectX 10's capabilities. But that will change very soon as DirectX 10 titles start to hit retail.

The vast majority of DirectX 10 titles will also be able to run on DirectX 9.0c, but you will just miss out on some optimizations and special effects. Over time, developers will completely move to DirectX 10 and it will be required. I don't look for that to happen for some time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_x

[Mantis]

Pardon me for sounding out of character, (I don't usually rant, even if I hate a product), but Vista is a pile of $#@*, and that's straight from the horse's mouth. The Microsoft wing at NAIT (where my brother is just finishing his CST degree) is replete with profs and people in the industry who have intimate knowledge of Vista, and what it was supposed to be. To the best of my understanding (sometimes when those guys really get going, my eyes kind of glaze over...) Vista was supposed to be a wonderful new fusion of MS's .NET technologies. But they encountered severe difficulties, and it was dropped from Vista.

So - the reason for the 'upgrade' has been canned, but what the hell, let's release this thing anyways... We can incorporate the Media-centre idea into it, make it a total system hog, and not only force everyone to buy a new PC to run this thing, but as with all Windows software, it likely won't function up to specs for years to come...

:laugh:

Am I bent out of shape about any of this? Hardly! I'm not going to waste an iota of brain power worrying about this kind of thing. It's just another head shaker for me when I consider MS and their wonderful business plan.

:D

[CPangracs]

The US Military will soon be upgrading to Vista, even before the move to XP is complete.

If you don't own any shares of MS, you're an ID10T!