Why should I need Windows XP?

the_syco

As the title says, why should I need Windows XP to play the latest games? I don't get this. 1st it was the Battlefield 2 editor, and now its the Age of Empires 3 demo, that only works with Windows XP.

Could someone tell me whats so special about Windows XP, that games can only run on it, but not on an eariler version(of Windows)?

mp3guy

The same reason Half Life 2 won't run on dos, the OS is too old, and doesn't have things that newer OS's have

TerrorFirmer

Yeah it sucks, but again its very rare to find a PC capable or running the said games WITHOUT xp in this day and age....

airetam_storm

Xp handles system resources like RAM, pagefiling and cpu cycles better than previous windows. Although 200 was good at this too, i dont know why they have removed compatibility for it

DublinWriter

the_syco wrote:

As the title says, why should I need Windows XP to play the latest games?

DirectX 9.x support.

vibe666

because it's better than its predecessors and as such things move on and take advantage of that fact (such as directx 9.x, as was mentioned above).

XP has been out the best part of 4-5 years now, so if you're playing the latest games then you must have a decent specced pc. if you have then you won't be getting the most out of it without xp either imho.

Kazujo

I'm running XP at the moment, it has some nice bells and the occational whistle but I think 2K is much faster and has less over heads than XP. HL 2 definitely ran faster on my PC under 2K than XP.

I think it's a bit of a Microsoft I'll scratch your back you but money in my back pocket deal with the game developers

steviec

Wouldn't it just be a simple case of the developers seeing that 90% of their target audience are using XP so they write it for XP, and they don't take the extra time to make whatever changes are needed so it'll work on other OS's aswell.

tman

steviec wrote:

Wouldn't it just be a simple case of the developers seeing that 90% of their target audience are using XP so they write it for XP, and they don't take the extra time to make whatever changes are needed so it'll work on other OS's aswell.

funny coincidence that AOE3 is published by MS, though.
i'm sure they could afford to spend that extra bit of time adding win2k support

Gizzard

vibe666 wrote:

because it's better than its predecessors and as such things move on and take advantage of that fact (such as directx 9.x, as was mentioned above).

XP has been out the best part of 4-5 years now, so if you're playing the latest games then you must have a decent specced pc. if you have then you won't be getting the most out of it without xp either imho.

that might be true when you compare XP to 98/95 Me etc but XP is essentially windows 2k with a facelift, there is no reason why win 2k could not run Dx 9+ and the newer games, its just Microsoft productising, nothing new here.

But as I said its not much to do with technology when you talk about the difference between 2k and xp

Stephen

Windows 2000 DOES run DX9. The fact that it is at the end of its supported life may have something to do with new stuff not supporting it properly.

On June 30, 2005, the Windows 2000 product family (including Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server, Datacenter Server, and Windows 2000 Professional) transitions from the Mainstream Support to Extended Support phase. This transition marks the progression of Windows 2000 through its product life cycle, originally announced in 2002. The Windows 2000 family entered the marketplace in February 2000 and remains a robust, mature product as it enters its 5-year Extended Support life-cycle phase.

Kazujo

Has anyone actually tried these XP only games on 2K? I wouldn't be the first time that software has stated does not work with windows ... and has.

Although I'm sure MS will try to cut 2K out of DX support soon enough but I think there will still be plenty of games that do support 2K.

I'd like to see more games support Linux move away form MS altogether.

Ishmael

the_syco wrote:

As the title says, why should I need Windows XP to play the latest games? I don't get this. 1st it was the Battlefield 2 editor, and now its the Age of Empires 3 demo, that only works with Windows XP.

Could someone tell me whats so special about Windows XP, that games can only run on it, but not on an eariler version(of Windows)?

Battlefield 2 runs on windows 2000, friend of mine has it running and its ok, a little slow to load but works grand.

the_syco

Kazujo wrote:

Has anyone actually tried these XP only games on 2K? I wouldn't be the first time that software has stated does not work with windows ... and has.

Although I'm sure MS will try to cut 2K out of DX support soon enough but I think there will still be plenty of games that do support 2K.

I'd like to see more games support Linux move away form MS altogether.

I run Win2K, and BF2 runs grand. I'm using DirectX 9.0c on it, so I doubt its due to "DirectX 9.x support". Also, Win2K uses less RAM than WinXP, so I'm not to sure about XP having better memory management. It does sound like typical MS BS, tho.

Just wondering: is there a way to fix the registry to make games think this is an XP machine?