Windows Vista for Gamers

Extremetech.com features an article about the Windows Vista presentation for game developers given at Microsoft’s Meltdown convention.

DirectX 10, the Vista Game Explorer and Vista’s WinSAT tools are discussed…

In brief:

• Windows Game Explorer allows easy brwosing through installed games (Media Player style) rather than going through the usual Programs->Some Publisher->SomeGame…
• WinSAT (Windows System Assessment Tool) is a function that analyzes your PC’s performance and stores the data in a protected system file, so that the OS and applications can enable or disable features appropriately. This can be used by game developers set the game’s performance and details level etc. according to the performance test results performed by WinSAT.
• DirectX 10
• Revised API. Almost completelly rewritten.
• Strict hardware requirements
• New “geometry shaders” which operates on entire primitives (dots, lines, triangles…) rather than single vertices.

Bottom line is that Microsoft is not ditching the PC as a gaming platform because of Xbox 360…