It will be at least 2 years before non-Microsoft games go Vista only, probably longer.

Quite simply- I think Microsoft is going to run into the problem of people not feeling it's necessary to upgrade XP. I haven't had any issues with XP, and most security holes come through the internet.

The last group to switch over the Vista as well will be Stardock's audience.

I'll make this bold prediction right now:
In 2011 or 2012 when GCIII is out on beta- you will be able to play it just fine on an XP machine. It will not use DX10 unless someone forces a way for Microsoft to make it non-exclusive.

Bold Prediction #2- In 1-2 years, someone will figure out how to get rid of the copy protection crap Microsoft put in Vista.

Bold Prediction #3- Only 5% of the PC owners in America will care about 1 or 2. At most.

Bold Prediction #4- GCIII will be the last GC on the PC. GCIV will be console.

Bold Prediction #2- In 1-2 years, someone will figure out how to get rid of the copy protection crap Microsoft put in Vista.

News flash: PMP was cracked yesterday.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/29/1811201

Vista does have numerous legitmate concerns for most tech savy and profesional users. It seems microsoft was looking to only make two types of customers happy at launch.

1. the non tech savy that will buy it because it is the new shiny...and because Crysis will look so sweet on dx10 (for the ones that know what dx10 is).

2. Large corporations looking to have more control over employees and data.

Microsoft has pretty much chosen to piss off everyone else. Software developers, including game developers are not happy. John Carmack (programer for id), and Gabe Newell (Valve) were not happy with Vista. Newell went as far to say that Vista might make him go Mac (I'm sure mac users everywhere rejoiced). My wife's company whom she is a programer for seems to despise Vista and refuses to use it (for now).

I believe some of the nay sayers are going over board, but alot of the concerns are valid. There is alot of negativity for vista on the net right now over numerous issues. XP while there was some resistance, never caused this much venom to be spewed forth by the masses.

As a graphics professional I can say that Vista is a kick in the teeth to 3-d artist and developers. It does nothing to help us be more productive. It just hogs more of our precious ram. Almost no graphics software supports it. Vista at one point didn't even support open GL. Now they have some kind of pathetic poorly implemented open GL support that performs far worse than XP. It will be a cold day in hell if they think 3-d developers are going to switch exclusivly to dx10. Is Microsoft trying to force me to migrate to Mac?

It will be interesting to see what Softimage, Adobe, Autodesk and others choose to do in the future. Right now it's looking like once again Macs will be the superior graphics machines and PC's the superior business machines.Both sides seem eager to lockdown exactly what you can and can't do on your machine. So much for moving forward.

I'll be using XP pro sp2 for as long as possible.

For a company like Stardock, which has been a beacon of quality, reliability, individuality and loyalty to more than the bottom line, to make a blatant plug for the corporate machine like this...It makes me wonder if the sell-out is far behind.

I couldn't have said it better myself. After all I've gone through just to make a system that is better than it was 'out of the box', not to mention all the money (and more to come) I am actually starting to wonder if I will still be playing computer games in the not so distant future.
First, the difference between computers that are 'Vista ready' vs. 'Vista capable' is vague, not really giving what requirements a PC has to have in order to run the basic version of Vista or the premium version (and why would there be two in the first place?... $$$$)but from what I've read if your PC is Vista capable, you can only use the basic version which admittedly doesn't really have any of the Vista 'features' that you would buy the OS for in the first place.
Second, are graphics cards manufacturers going to offer some sort of discount when I have no choice but to 'upgrade' yet again for DirectX10? You know damn well they probably won't (with the possible exception of evga nvidia).
This wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't about the money, at least for me. How much more are we going to take as consumers before we start to flex our buying muscles? I mean come on, is it just me? Doesn't anyone else think that we should try to do more than say, "Oh well, what will be will be... if it means I have to pump out more money who cares?".
This is all a very sore subject to me.

I really can't agree with any points you made, Brad :/

1) Standardized benchmarks. Hooray, it's going to be easier for the average person to understand what will and won't run.

Lets be fair, the majority of us posting here probably already KNOW how the specs on a game match to our PCs, and how well it'll run. This is for the casual gamer who isn't really interested in computers. I can't see how it'll affect me at all.

2) I have shortcuts for game directories on my desktop, so I can run the client or start modifying it by double clicking anyway. When I was modding GC2, I think I had 5 shortcuts to various folders, so I could modify them all without manually navigating. What's the new explorer got to offer that old shortcuts couldn't do?

3) This is great for people who didn't pay any attention to what their kids played and don't want to go to the hassle of caring. Sorry, but it'll more than likely just turn out like internet parental controls, IE disabled within about 3 days. Built-in parental controls are generally weak, and the only way to actually utilise them is to know how your computer works better than your child does. And if you know that much, you should know enough to not let them buy completely unsuitable games.

4) Joy, I can now fork out for a $600 video card to play any new games built to work on vista. Oh, and I can upgrade to vista. Huzzah. As said, it's just

A) make DX10 vista only
make DX10 OMGUBERHAWT USE IT OR FAIL AT GAMES
C) Profit!

5) So solitaire and minesweeper will look shinier? I've never been a fan of built-in "casual" games. I suppose it could be good, but I doubt it's worth vista.

Yes, I'll be getting vista. EVE is upgrading to a dx10 client and the images and models show the graphics blowing every other game in existance out of the water. I like pretty explosions, so I'll be getting it, and a stupidly expensive video card too. I'll probably have to upgrade my entire computer to get it to run nicely too.

I'll be getting vista, but I'm not doing it because I like vista. I'm doing it because DX10 is vista only, and I'm certainly leaving it for 6 months so it can "iron out the kinks"

Bleh.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/

Humm.. from this, gaming is actually slower :/

I make all the same yes/no choices as Mumble, as I think most tech savvy people do. This is all part of the new MS attitude that says they should really own your computer. If you have any doubt, just remember they decided to make IE7 a "critical" security patch to the OS, when many people decided they didn't want it and would rather stick with IE6 or an alternative browser. I used to like MS many years ago, now I'm very agnostic. I find myself finding more and more of their actions offensive from a user and fairness standpoint. I actually bought their stock at 23, because from a neutral perspective it was under priced. But I still think Vista smells, and it smells in many ways...And we will all end up running it over the next few years.

1) Standardized benchmarks. Hooray, it's going to be easier for the average person to understand what will and won't run. Lets be fair, the majority of us posting here probably already KNOW how the specs on a game match to our PCs, and how well it'll run. This is for the casual gamer who isn't really interested in computers. I can't see how it'll affect me at all. 2) I have shortcuts for game directories on my desktop, so I can run the client or start modifying it by double clicking anyway. When I was modding GC2, I think I had 5 shortcuts to various folders, so I could modify them all without manually navigating. What's the new explorer got to offer that old shortcuts couldn't do? 3) This is great for people who didn't pay any attention to what their kids played and don't want to go to the hassle of caring. Sorry, but it'll more than likely just turn out like internet parental controls, IE disabled within about 3 days. Built-in parental controls are generally weak, and the only way to actually utilise them is to know how your computer works better than your child does. And if you know that much, you should know enough to not let them buy completely unsuitable games. 4) Joy, I can now fork out for a $600 video card to play any new games built to work on vista. Oh, and I can upgrade to vista. Huzzah. As said, it's just A) make DX10 vista only make DX10 OMGUBERHAWT USE IT OR FAIL AT GAMES C) Profit! 5) So solitaire and minesweeper will look shinier? I've never been a fan of built-in "casual" games. I suppose it could be good, but I doubt it's worth vista.

1) No, most people DO NOT know their PC specs.  Look how many people literally dismissed the "Your video drivers are too old to play this game. You MUST update them." dialog and then posted how buggy GalCiv II was?

The numerical performance rating system is really quite nice.

2) I think more and more people will be playing their PC on their high-def TV in their living room. The GAme Explorer makes doing that much easier for average users.

3) I dont' really care about parental controls.

4) DirectX 10 is a pretty major update. I'd argue that MS should be getting paid for it. We charge for expansion packs. MS has been giving away DirectX updates for years now on XP (DirectX 9 was a pretty big improvement too).

DirectX 10 isn't a big deal for us, but for first person shooters, it's a pretty big deal.

5) Having a desktop that is already a 3D surface means that game developers can make 3D games much easier.  Right now, it takes quite a bit of effort to make nice looking casual games.

I can think of quite a number of casual games that dont' exist right now that are possible now that I can do 3D on the desktop using WPF.

The one thing that annoys me about some of the MS-haters here is the whining about their so-called "rights." Let me put this simply: you do not have any "rights" to a PC. You do not have a "right" to a freely distributed OS that does everything you want and is user friendly and has no DRM.

Intellectual Property is America's biggest industry at this point and will continue to be so in the future. Microsoft is trying to protect itself against people who want to ignore the law. There is nothing wrong with that at all, and in fact, MS is legally bound to take actions that tend to maximize its profits for its many, many investors (anyone who owns MS stock). If MS did NOT maximize its profits, any shareholder could start a lawsuit (called a derivative suit) claiming that MS has breached its duties to the shareholders. So please, anybody complaining about MS going after profit is simply ignorant of the corporate law.

If you don't like MS or Vista: DO NOT BUY IT. It's that simple. Go ahead and keep XP or use your Linux "distro." I consider myself pretty computer savvy, but I would never bother with Linux. It's too inconvenient for everyday use and I like using mainstream software that I know works. Contrary to the impression you'd get from most of the posters here, you'd think MS products don't work 90% of the time. The fact of the matter is that they work 99.9% of the time and that is good enough for most people.

So go ahead and hate MS with all your soul--but then I suppose you also have to hate Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Which means that you hate the fact that Mr. Gates is easily the largest philanthropist in the HISTORY OF HUMANKIND. Hate the millions of dollars given to combat AIDS in Africa, the billions of dollars that "evil Microsoft" has made available to poor nations and research efforts around the globe. Has MS conducted itself "nicely" throughout its history? No, but those issues were resolved according to the antitrust law.

So go ahead, reserve your right to hate all things MS. I just think you are ignorant of both the law and business realities. I do not defend all their actions, but to demonize them like this is just plain silly.

"Daring to discuss the positive aspects of Vista" is fine. I don't really care about that, I have no intention of upgrading to it in the next few years, if ever, and I'm perfectly content to "lose out" on any software that requires DX 10 in that time. What is prompting a strong reaction is fear and concern, I think. Finding an advertisement for Vista on the front page, in Brad's own words no less, makes all of us wonder what's going on. It's very confusing (and concerning) when the anti-DRM, anti-forced-upgrade, work-constantly-to-support-our-products independent company abruptly becomes a vocal supporter of a product that is the opposite of all those things.

Wincustomize stuff. It's been made clear to me in another forum thread that this is the motivating factor for SD (and Brad's) immediate interest in Vista. That makes sense, I suppose. Disregard my earlier comments, in that case. The whole thing's still somewhat confusing, though.

Exactly. You just assume that everyone thinks Vista is horrible and that MS is the Antichrist. Newsflash: not everyone agrees with you! Not even all the computer game players of the world! So it's quite possible Brad is just saying, "Look, here's an OS that is kind of neat. It's not perfect yet, but it's good for gaming." It's not a conspiracy and it's nothing to be "afraid of" (a very, very odd reaction to Brad's post, if you ask me). Also, SD has chosen a market strategy. MS has chosen theirs. There is no reason to believe that Brad is selling out to MS. SHeesh.