“…as it mostly killed OpenGL with DirectX, tried to kill MP3/AAC with WMA, and wants to kill JPEG with Windows Media Photo. Microsoft isn’t a fan of open standards.”

“Carmack confirms that he is working on a new engine for a completely new franchise not based on any of the company’s currently existing intellectual properties.”

… he hasn’t said anything about it technically but I would be willing bet to it will have DX10 compatibility just so the new engine can be marketed to more companies looking for an engine other than the UE3 engine to use (plus to make it future proof and to compete against the UE3 and CryEngine 2). The CryEngine 2 should be getting a lot of interest as well and I am looking forward to seeing what another company can do with that engine.

Carmack says he is not thrilled with dealing with DX10 locked down and restrictive control set and is just having fun trying to get the most out of DX9 on X360. They are both taking a wait and see attitude to see if Vista even gets off the ground. After all you’ll only have a few exclusive titles even appear this year on Vista.

Carmack says you won’t even see Quake Wars support DX10 in Vista. As of now there is no market for DX10, the only people running Vista are us Beta testors, few businesses, some pre-viewers and reviewers. Being only on Vista severely limits DX10’s appeal. Vista sales projections have steadily been in decline and we will just have to wait to see after the end of this month.

Plus Vista is still struggling with Aeroglass and gaming conflicts. Recently Microsoft has extended it’s support for WinXP well into the next decade. The struggle with attempting to push people into Vista with gaming bait seems to be failing too. No Games! Too many people won’t be able to afford the hardware to even run them in this fat hog OS.

So Anuban, I don’t see a chance Gears would release on Vista. Maybe on WinXP with them both using DX9, but that’s it. If I could give you my Vista right now, I would in a heart beat. It’s a monster and will need a lot work to thin it down so it’s capable of running games in any decent manner.

That would be Microsoft’s decision to port it to WinXP, and I think that would degrade the X360’s exclussive value and make it’s fans angry. Halo was a different story altogether and it would have been a mistake to not port it to PC.