Vista, will it be game?

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 30 January 2007 08:59

Opinion and Analysis

As far as gaming on the PC is concerned, eye candy and immersion are important elements, Vista and DirectX 10 will add to this experience.  But there is no compelling reason to jump into this from day one.  While the console gaming world go ga-ga about High-Def gaming at 1080p, PC gamers have been (under Windows XP) toying with resolutions much grander than that for years. 

Games such as Medieval Total War II, F.E.A.R, Fable & Halflife 2 provide worlds that are graphically stunning and immersive, running on hardware technology from the past few years.  Furthermore, the popularity of games such as World of Warcraft, Age of Empires and The Sims prove that this hardware need not be pushed to the limit to achieve commercial success for developers.

The popularity of the technologically inferior Wii console, also proves this point in the console gaming arena.

Microsoft is pushing for gaming to become platform agnostic, well at least as far as Microsoft controlled platforms go.  Vista is a crucial cog in this design, it will enable titles to be developed allowing cross platform communication and game-play.  This is an exciting development, and one that will be hopefully exploited to the fullest. 

It will take time for suitable games to emerge into this new gaming arena, and only brave development houses will be first to venture there.  Are there any brave development houses still out there?

I am interested in the point of view of WireTalkers on this web site, will you as a PC gamer be jumping onto the Vista wagon as soon as feasible?  Or be taking a more laconic approach to the gaming wizardry and wait for that killer app to prod you into the new Vista world?