According to a recent post (http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/09/06/136222.shtml?tid=189&tid=201&tid=10) at Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/), it looks like Direct X 9.0 will bring to a close the saga of DirectX Graphics. New APIs that are part of Windows Graphics Foundation (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1629331,00.asp) and Avalon (http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/avalon/default.aspx) will take up where DX9.0 left off.

"Microsoft will still rely on DirectX in name for the rest of the core components, but the graphics API is now under a new name."

Certainly the end of an era. But then, we've all come to take Microsoft's future plans with a pinch of salt, so just wait and see what happens.