DirectX 11 is not limited to Win7, it is available for Vista aswell.Guest said:
WinXP was limited to DX9, so I simply had to get Vista in order to use my DX10 hardware and play what few DX10 games were out there. Then Windows 7 hit the fan with DX11, which you could only get with Windows 7. I go where the DirectX goes, and I'll keep on doing that for as long as games require DirectX. If this trend, adding a new version of DirectX with each new version of Windows keeps up, then (as a gamer) the choice has been removed from the equasion.
I just did a couple searching and read a little bit about Win8, and it seems it might be shipping with DX12. If it does, and if you can't get DX12 for Win7 then that's that. I'd have to get Win8. Case closed.
The way Microsoft has been using this situation to force gamers into buying their next OS is pure marketing genius (and potentially also pure evil).
The limitation they did in not making it available for Windows XP has hurt PC gaming enough.
Still to this day 50% are on XP, and only a fifth or so of systems are on Win7.
This divides the PC landscape and makes the lives of game developers so much harder.
Why do you think most games released today a decade after DirectX 9 was released still only support that API, and not the later releases?