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What is the DX9 compatibility supposed to be like?
Are you saying that Halo 2 will will cause too much stress to my AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ and Creative X-Fi soundcard that Windows XP can't handle the audio?
Two words: Marketing Ploy
Like many others, i'm having trouble buying the performance argument. One things for certain, in the past, new OS's tend to be significantly *slower* on existing hardware esp when they incorporate a lot of new chrome, animated widgets and whatnot. this was true for OSX, WinXP, Win95... and so forth
At this moment, why would anyone who wasn't buying a new PC upgrade to Vista? Sure...Aero, security...all these cool things promised but ..aha...the rank and file aren't motivated to upgrade. And we know it's going to run slower than XP on existing machines.
It's one thing to spoon the general public the marketing drivel, but to put it on your blog as truth? You're asking a bit much. We may have to suck up to you A-list bloggers but don't expect us to call this sow's ear a silk purse.
All you're told us is that the multitasking in Vista might now be up to scratch - multitasking in Windows NT4/2000/XP was never quite as good as UNIX. Now you've given me something to look forward to.
And no, it ain't Halo 2. They're unlikely to release it for the Mac.
In PC gaming standards, graphically it's behind current games, and I can't imagine they'd put too much effort to make it look that much better, as Bungie would annoy the Xbox owners.
Now if they said Halo 3 was coming for Xbox 360 and Windows Vista only, that would be a different kettle of fish.
Um, *DUH*?
Sheesh, MS's a business, if they can use Halo 2 to get more people to buy Vista, then they have to do that, because god knows, at this point, Balmer's about ready to start turning tricks in the fish market to get any kind of life into Microsoft's stock price.
Although to be fair, I've noticed plenty of sound problems on my XP machine (my built-in Realtek sound cut out during any 3D game of Freelancer quality on up, and my Audigy 2 somehow managed to crash the OS...I don't even play games on my PC any more for that reason)
I mean, obviously XP isn't up to the job of running a game originally designed for a 733MHz x86 CPU with (by today's standards) a paltry amount of RAM, but if Win 2k can run it, could Microsoft support those lucky customers who have the superior gaming OS (i.e. 2k or Vista)? I mean, it's a shame that XP is so crippled with respect to multimedia, but there's no need to penalise the Win2k users for that.
Yes, that was sarcasm.
My advice: until you have actual technical reasons to hand as to the reasons for this decision, I'd keep quiet about this. You run the risk of looking very foolish.
In fact, I can't work out if this whole blog entry is some elaborate troll or not.
All modern games downgrade respectfully to prior versions of DirectX. Even Half-Life 2 is playable on video cards limited to DirectX 7 technology.
At any rate, I don't imagine adult gamers are going to upgrade to Vista just to play a kiddie game like Halo.
I've witnessed the hell up front and close. Just the other day my nephew bought a game he couldn't play very well on his machine.
Windows Vista is much better with multimedia and games. Anyone who plays with the system for more than two minutes will see that. It will let game developers create a better experience and one that'll be more consistently excellent.
OF COURSE there are some business issues here as well. It costs a lot of money and resources to test software on more operating systems. Bungie is a pretty small group (I did an interview there if you wanna get some sense of how many people work there).
This was a business decision, made by people who want to push Vista adoption at the cost of their sales of Halo 2 to PC Gamers. There is no technical reason, no matter what bullshit you dredge up, that dictates this being a Vista only product.
Here's hoping that these retarded decisions marginalize the worthless company you work for to irrelevancy.
Wow. I don't want to argue about it here, but I hope that's some kind of joke.
I should also note that the audio stack for Vista has been completely rewritten. So has the networking stack.
The gaming team's David Weller just wrote to me to have you all stop speculating and hang out until they can discuss the reasons in public. There ARE reasons, I hear.
Still, my initial comment stands: making weak statements like your initial one Robert is worse than making none at all. At best it makes you look condescending, at worst you look like the worst kind of old-school marketing drone.
Just do your normal thing and say 'I agree this sux, let me find out why it is happening'
Only time will tell if more people will spend the ~$200 for a Vista upgrade + Halo 2 or will those people be offset by a group who would have purchased the game had it run on XP.
There may be some people who not only refuse to buy the game but also refuse to upgrade to Vista because they are tired of getting jerked around.
So, here's an example ALREADY of a game that doesn't work on XP. I guess everyone will say "there's no technical reason why that shouldn't be," right?
Patrick says: "Hello, my computer is a year old. It's outdated. It's not the game, dude, it played awesome on your computer."
Pardon my cynicism, but I wonder if those reasons are as good as the ones executives at Microsoft argued (in court under oath, I might add) for Internet Explorer being impossible to remove from Windows.
But you know, do what you want. I thought Halo was garbage and I won't be running Halo 2 whether I use Vista or not. It's petty of Mighty Microsoft to resort to using game franchises to push sales of a new OS release.
For some reason, call it "the cruft" that develops on a year old installation of Windows XP on a typical home computer - that ruins it from doing anything useful or interesting. Your son is experiencing this common disappointment in trying to play a new game. And that example becomes the justification for tieing a nearly two year old last generation console game port to the new OS.
I get it!
Hint: the game he has DEFINITELY won't run on Windows 95.
Wow. I don’t want to argue about it here, but I hope that’s some kind of joke. said Brandon Paddock.
I don't need to argue about it. I have a screenshot which reminds me how "bad" the multitasking can get under Windows. I'm NOT saying it is BAD, but that in my experience, I've seen a lot better - especially when under load.
If you don't believe me, then we just need to go to the local Microsoft Technical Evangelist to get the full story:
Hey look, we're at his web site already - the reason he gives for Halo 2 being on Vista only is that XP's audio won't play properly when the machine is under stress. How much more transparent can you get?
So, here’s an example ALREADY of a game that doesn’t work on XP. I guess everyone will say “there’s no technical reason why that shouldn’t be,” right?
Robert, that's like saying "My car can't run on Diesel, so Diesel's bad fuel" even though you have a gasoline engine. Your example would only work if Halo 2 was brand new and state of the art. It's not. Halo 2 is an old game running on older hardware. The fact that Microsoft is using any reason other than "Drive Vista Sales among gamers" as a reason for limiting an old game like Halo 2 to Vista shows that once again, MS still has that old "Our customers are too stupid to know how things work" streak going. Gotta purge it some more.
MS bloggers can provide all the clear information they'd like, but when the company engages in idiocy like this, it taints everything they do. I don't really care if Halo 2 plays on Vista or not. My reasons for buying it have more to do with the moribund state of the gaming industry and how 40% of the games out there are still nothing more than remakes of Wolfenstein 3-D. (Hell, iD's been making the same game for decades, but it obviously works). But don't try and come up with BS about technical issues when it plays on an old POS like an original XBox. I mean, Honky Puh-LEASE!
Wasn't there just a back and forth on Slashdot and integrated video and Vista and glass?
I would echo what Tim said above: wait for David Weller to explain this away.
But even so it's a pointless thing methinks, Halo 3 will be out by that timeframe or near, and Halo has never played well on PC, nor had much volume. Halo got the console mantle, and Microsoft taking all this bad press and losing sales just to push a platform strategy. Chinese Wall the Bungie group, I thought they said they would, and not wrap Bungie in the Microsoft soup. Mark that down as another broken promise.
Make a Halo 3 for 360 and Xbox 1. Make Halo 2 for Xbox and PC. But no, Microsoft playing the force upgrade game. I don't care what techincal excuse wand cop-out you wave over it, it can be done.
Would they play the SAME game with say Office? Office 12 doesn't run on XP? Come on...
Bungie has just killed a potential marketbed of millions of users, but they maybe think the numbers of XP users will be so small as to make Vista more viable? Why rope a Game Developer into this Microsoft upgrade strategy hell?
Of course, if the only benefit to longwind is the ability to run yet another shoot-em-up game, I doubt that anyone over the age of 18 will need it.
So, here’s an example ALREADY of a game that doesn’t work on XP."
No, the hardware won't run the game, not XP. Jesus, what pathetic logic. What game does not, besides mentioning OS compatability, mention memory, video card, etc... as recommendations/requirements?
Why would anyone need to say: what we want is this video card, this memory, etc... but instead we'll just say the software we hope for because even then a machine with that software might not meet our hardware reqs? No one.
"my son’s game doesn’t run because the hardware isn’t appropriate. Has nothing to do with the OS."
So... you know you've already thrown out 2 or 3 bullshit excuses and are happy to keep sliding along to the next bullshit excuse that might sound half reasonable even though you have no information whatsoever? Brilliant!
Halo 2's going to be the same. When it came out, it was already more than matched by PC games like Far Cry, Halflife 2 and Doom 3 (all of which I personally think are superior games, each for different reasons). If it was released on pc then it would have given all of them a run for their money though. Delaying it even more is pretty much guaranteeing failure on PC since it will look downright primitive compared to the crop of pc games it will be competing against.
This is a complete crock. Vista is only different from XP in that theres more DRM, nothing else.
Second, the real reason Halo will be Vista only is right here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931... It's called DirectX 10, and its got a lot of new stuff. And those of you who think Vista is just XP SP2 + DRM should read the rest of the article.