They're making it too easy for IGN to name it's 25# dumbest moments in gaming.Posted at 5:20PM on Mar 4th 2009 by Marcelo Collar

I think this is a good thing. We'll never progress technologically if we stick to using old software. DX9 and XP are like 8 years old.Posted at 11:36PM on Mar 4th 2009 by Einhanderkiller

It's not like they want people to be able to buy their game or anything.Posted at 3:11AM on Mar 5th 2009 by Ihavepants

I think this is a good thing. We'll never progress technologically if we stick to using old software. DX9 and XP are like 8 years old.
Posted at 11:36PM on Mar 4th 2009 by Einhanderkiller

3. things

1. not everything new is the "better" one.
2. too many people still have xp
3. xp was accepted very well at that time but vista bombed i just dont want a 20 gig operating system that really doesnt do that much different than the old one ,is twice as slow , 10 times big and changes all the interface experience you had in the last 15 years in a bad way so you have to search for every sh.t for 15 minutes until you found the right button or icon and THAT is no intuitive interface design if you new one takes longer than the old one.

this game is gonna bomb on the pc and they already know what they gonna say.
0MG P1R4CY!Posted at 8:30AM on Mar 5th 2009 by overflow

It's a smart move -- it's DX10 only title (So vista and windows 7 only). That means they only have one or two render paths to code (DX10 + 32-bit and DX10 + 64-bit). That makes the game a lot cheaper to build, and it also means they can fully optimise for DX10. A game properly optimised for DX10 will perform better than the same game running on a DX9 code patch (See far cry 2 for an example of this - the game is actually faster in vista because of this). This means older hardware, because of the optimisations should theoretically have a better chance of running this game well than if they had to split there resources amongst DX9 and 10. (More focus on DX10 = better optimisations = better legacy hardware performance) Further pretty much every new gaming PC (so excluding UMPCs such as netbooks) runs Vista (for the purpose of DX10 support, among other things). Vista has been out for a couple years now, by the time this game hits it will have been out for probably 3 or so years.

Generally speaking developers want to support hardware about 3 years old, so that's also consistant with this announcement. When you consider all the elements at play here I don't see any reason to support an old DX9 code path, especially when developing a game is such a pricy endevour it makes sence to cut back in any area you reasonably can to save money. Smart move.Posted at 1:31PM on Mar 5th 2009 by EclipseCDN

Interview with Artem, Lead Programmer on Stormrise with a bit more information about why Stormrise is DirectX 10 only - http://www.stormrisers.com/info/27_interview_artem_kulakov_lead_programmer_talks_about_directx_10.htmlPosted at 8:57PM on Mar 9th 2009 by Yug

gamensa Posted at 8:50AM on Apr 16th 2009 by gamensa