Gabe Newell: DirectX 10 for Vista was a mistake

dafloppyone · 27 Aug 2007 at 14:53

Heise Online reports that Gabe Newell, president of Valve Software, said in an interview that Microsoft made a terrible mistake releasing DirectX 10 for Vista only and excluding Windows XP. He said this decision affected the whole industry as so far only a very small percentage of players can use DirectX 10. When developing cross-platform games which are also released fo Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, developers look for the smallest common denominator. And since neither Microsoft's nor Sony's new consoles support Shader Model 4.0 for DirectX 10, only few games use it, he said. In addition, Newell bemoaned the increasing lack of input device diversity in PC gaming culture. He would like to see controllers like the Wiimote or the Guitar Hero guitar, but since DirectX support for devices like these had increasingly been reduced over the last few years, developers didn't dare implement these expensive innovations.

The Half-Life 2 Orange Box, which will be released for PC and Xbox 360 on 12. October, uses DirectX 10 functionality only for accelerating some mimics. Visually, however, it was virtually impossible to differentiate between the versions. The PS3 edition is being developed by an EA studio and is scheduled for release two to three weeks later. The game will already be available from download service Steam on 10. October. Newell said the later release date for the retail editions was requested by the retailers. Retailers also didn't want different versions, resulting in the release of a complete package containing Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress. Even before the release date, Valve will announce additional bundles for Steam so that existing Half-Life 2 users don't have to buy a second copy of the game.

Final8y · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:03

Makes sense, even if there was a small hit with Dx10 being shoehorned into XP like the small hit vista gets when running DX9 it would have been a good thing.

Sherbs · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:15

I am kinda annoyed with Microsoft for this, now whats the point in owning a DX10 Card without Vista.

I am not going to upgrade to Vista anytime soon, as XP does me perfectly fine.

My 8800GTS is crying =(

helmutcheese · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:20

You still have one of the fastest DX9C card in the world

afraser2k · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:28

helmutcheese said:
You still have one of the fastest DX9C card in the world

And why many people here have them bought them.

I think Microsoft assumed Vista would be adopted by "enthusiasts" early on to persuade developers to make DX10-only games. Unfortunately for them many are avoiding it until at least service pack 1 is released due to the various reported issues with it.

LoadsaMoney · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:29

helmutcheese said:
You still have one fo the fastest DX9C card in the world

Agreed, their Dx9 performance is outstanding.

ergonomics · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:30

afraser2k said:
And why many people here have them bought them.

I think Microsoft assumed Vista would be adopted by "enthusiasts" early on to persuade developers to make DX10-only games. Unfortunately for them many are avoiding it until at least service pack 1 is released due to the various reported issues with it.

do you think sp1 will actually turn things around? improved performance in ever game over xp? better optimizing? better dx10?

i just dont see it happeneing, at least for another 1.5 years

helmutcheese · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:32

SP1 does not contain any miracle fixes BTW, ran the beta's, they really need to tone down the security from the users end, its a PIA but can get around it.

MikeHunt79 · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:39

Wimotes can be used on the PC with a little jiggery pokery - it would be good if some games could have to option for it. :cool:

ic1male · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:43

Well of course the PS3 isn't going to use Shader Model 4.0 and DirectX 10. It's Microsoft proprietary software! The common factor across the board is OpenGL. Devs should use that instead.

afraser2k · 27 Aug 2007 at 15:57

ergonomics said:
do you think sp1 will actually turn things around? improved performance in ever game over xp? better optimizing? better dx10?

i just dont see it happeneing, at least for another 1.5 years

I haven't seen the SP1 beta so can't comment on what it'll bring though I'm not expecting much. I'm just hoping that it'll fix a lot of the reported issues since work are expecting me to move over to Vista "soon" after SP1 release since I do Windows desktop support. I usually switch my home machine over at the same time to get more used to the new operating system.

Garp · 27 Aug 2007 at 16:12

ic1male said:
Well of course the PS3 isn't going to use Shader Model 4.0 and DirectX 10. It's Microsoft proprietary software! The common factor across the board is OpenGL. Devs should use that instead.

No, but it could have been developed with Shared Model 4.0, which would have made cross-porting easier as they'd just need to translate DirectX10 calls to SM4 to whatever format the SDK for PS3 requires. SM4.0 is an external standard to Microsoft, Microsoft chose to make DX10 compatible with it. Without SM4 on either x-box360 or PS3 that cuts a good market out, include the low market penetration of vista and who's going to bother? OpenGL would be great but has in the past been notorious for being slow to take in new features (though 2.1 includes SM4), and 3 is due out next month.

Pixel · 27 Aug 2007 at 16:27

You only have to look at the Steam survey stats to see why Newell is saying this:

Windows XP - 986,985 - 90.33 %
Windows Vista - 87,269 - 7.99 %

- DirectX10 Systems (Vista with DirectX10 GPU) - 2.31% of users

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Sem · 27 Aug 2007 at 16:33

Pixel said:
You only have to look at the Steam survey stats to see why Newell is saying this:

Windows XP - 986,985 - 90.33 %
Windows Vista - 87,269 - 7.99 %

- DirectX10 Systems (Vista with DirectX10 GPU) - 2.31% of users

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

well vista + DX10 GPUs have only been out for around 6-8 months

XP + DX9c has been around for a good 3-4 years

(btw im not a huge fan of vista)

afraser2k · 27 Aug 2007 at 16:41

Sem said:
well vista + DX10 GPUs have only been out for around 6-8 months

XP + DX9c has been around for a good 3-4 years

(btw im not a huge fan of vista)

It's still not very encouraging for any developer looking at the stats. Even after six months+ you'd expect at least some DX10-only titles if it was as good as Microsoft wants us to believe. I think though we should wait until after Christmas to see how well Vista does in the traditional PC release season.

The problem for Microsoft is having, I think anyway, is giving us enough reasons to switch over from Windows XP. Given the hardware survey it seems that a lot of people will probably need a new PC to get the full benefits of Vista as well.

Chris C · 27 Aug 2007 at 16:45

There is no real reason to want DX10 at the moment, there are no killer games for it yet. If it were to be available in XP it would give them more incentive to develop it sooner.

You can see where microsoft were coming from, they assumed people would buy Vista just for it, but it hasnt worked out that way so far.

Garp · 27 Aug 2007 at 17:17

Chris C said:
You can see where microsoft were coming from, they assumed people would buy Vista just for it, but it hasnt worked out that way so far.

If thats the case then MS displayed a supreme amount of arrogance considering the number of journals, blogs and other press that observed it would take an awful lot more than what vista has over XP to make people change.

ic1male · 27 Aug 2007 at 17:36

I've learned something new today, then. I always thought Shader Model was a core part of DirectX and something MS had engineered.

Pulseammo · 27 Aug 2007 at 17:50

I'm not quite sure what Gabe's point is here, he is whining (once again) about consoles (last time it seemed to be "I can't be bothered to write threaded code, future games are going to be hard to develop").

This time its "I hate DirectX10, my reason for hating DirectX10 is that consoles don't support SM4, so I'm forced to use DX9/SM3." Am I missing some kind of point here or is this just completely brain dead?? For some reason its DX10's fault that consoles don't support SM4?

Strangely enough PC hardware gets updates faster than consoles, stop whining, lose some weight, and develop using something older that is supported by all 3 platforms if you want cross platform compatibility over bleeding edge. No, you can't have your cake and eat it, you've obviously already had too much cake.

His point about XP not having DX10 for PC only development is semi valid. Again, you can't have your cake and eat it, the shackles of backwards compatibility ultimately stunt growth. I'm sure that if the world didn't rely on so much x86 software that the arch would be long dead (example of the shackles

).

SS-89 · 27 Aug 2007 at 17:53

Pulseammo said:
I'm not quite sure what Gabe's point is here, he is whining (once again) about consoles (last time it seemed to be "I can't be bothered to write threaded code, future games are going to be hard to develop").

This time its "I hate DirectX10, my reason for hating DirectX10 is that consoles don't support SM4, so I'm forced to use DX9/SM3." Am I missing some kind of point here or is this just completely brain dead?? For some reason its DX10's fault that consoles don't support SM4?

Strangely enough PC hardware gets updates faster than consoles, stop whining, lose some weight, and develop using something older that is supported by all 3 platforms if you want cross platform compatibility over bleeding edge. No, you can't have your cake and eat it, you've obviously already had too much cake.

His point about XP not having DX10 for PC only development is semi valid. Again, you can't have your cake and eat it, the shackles of backwards compatibility ultimately stunt growth. I'm sure that if the world didn't rely on so much x86 software that the arch would be long dead (example of the shackles ).

Perfect summation

.