More titles drop Windows XP support. Industry finally makes progress.

[ResonanceSD]

following the furore a few weeks ago when XCOM:EO came out without supporting 2001's Windows XP,

Eurogamer reported a while ago http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-26-assassins-creed-3-pc-system-requirements-chop-windows-xp-support



That hilariously, AC3 and Black Ops 2 would also not support Windows XP out of the box.

Which, in my increasingly humble opinion, is a step forward for the industry.


I mean, minimum spec for AC3 on PC is an 8600GT (2006), but still, baby steps, game industry, baby steps.

 

[Rack]

Steps in the wrong direction as far as I'm concerned. Windows 7 is scarcely 3 years old so any PC from mid 2009 and earlier had no good option other than XP. I don't believe buying a new pc every 3 years in order to get prettier graphics and shorter and shallower games is a good step in any way, shape or form. But we aren't even getting that, what Assassins Creed 3 offers us is worse framerates. Nothing more, nothing less.

Personally I'm unaffected as my system should manage 60fps easily but the trend is not one I am happy about. I would be much happier if graphics development froze at Half Life 2 and we had more interesting vibrant art styles, larger, more interesting locations and deeper more emergent gameplay than this turgid stream of corridor shooters and padded open world games.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Windows 7 is scarcely 3 years old so any PC from mid 2009 and earlier had no good option other than XP

Errr... whuh?

They've had 3 years to upgrade their OS. That's long enough.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Windows 7 is scarcely 3 years old so any PC from mid 2009 and earlier had no good option other than XP

Errr... whuh?

They've had 3 years to upgrade their OS. That's long enough.

Nah. They've had since 2006 to upgrade from XP. The notion that they can keep using an 11 year old system is quite laughable, really, and I for one welcome the games that ditch support.

 

[Hagi]

Supporting an OS for about 10 years sounds about right.

From everything I recall supporting 3 versions of Windows seems to be the standard anyway. Used to be Windows 7, Vista and XP. Now it'll be Windows 8, 7 and Vista.

I don't really see it as either a step forward or backward. At some point they stopped supporting Windows 95, at some point Windows 98 etc. At this point they'll stop supporting Windows XP. Just business as usual, XP had a good run.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Windows 7 is scarcely 3 years old so any PC from mid 2009 and earlier had no good option other than XP

Errr... whuh?

They've had 3 years to upgrade their OS. That's long enough.

Nah. They've had since 2006 to upgrade from XP. The notion that they can keep using an 11 year old system is quite laughable, really, and I for one welcome the games that ditch support.

To be fair, Vista was such a pile of carefully handpicked slime that it's impossible to fault someone for staying miles away and clutching their XP for a while. However, there is no reason not to use 7 anymore, as it's initial problems are now gone.

Well, for what it's worth I switched to Vista in 2007 and it was awesome. No more random crashed with XP and other assorted bullshit.

But then I did make sure to buy a computer that could run it.

And to be fair: *every* complaint people had against Vista was levelled agains XP in 2001. Bloated? Check. Ugly? Check. System hog? Check? Expensive? Check. Crashy? Check.

Let's be honest: XP was a worse than Vista ever was until they released SP2. Only then did it actually become at least decent.

 

[marurder]

Let's be honest: XP was a worse than Vista ever was until they released SP2. Only then did it actually become at least decent.

Perhaps so. But it is still [comparability] one of the better more reliable mainstream OS's around. Vista simply isn't an option (I regard it as the modern Millennium Edition). Dropping support for XP isn't the right step. They should drop support for Vista and add support for other systems if not already doing so (Linux etc etc).

 

[ResonanceSD]

A Microsoft OS becomes truly decent after SP1. XP, Vista, 7. So far. 8 may buck the trend, who knows.

Most of the complaints regarding Vista were because people were upgrading to it on computers that couldn't handle it

Anyway,

The very notion that programmers have to spend additional time adding support for an 11 year old OS just because people are too lazy to upgrade because programmers keep spending time supporting their platform because people are too lazy to upgrade because prog-

Is ridiculous. To the XP defenders, when would an appropriate time to drop XP support be for you?

 

[Fractral]

I still game on XP. I'm running XP on this computer right now, and I've never had a problem with it. I can kinda understand how its easier for developers, not having to support XP, but I can't see how anyone would be happy that people are being excluded from playing games for no fault of their own. XP is going to be supported until 2014, last I heard, so there's no requirement to upgrade yet, if you don't want to.

 

[Supertegwyn]

Thank god. XP is way too old to still be supported (11 goddamn years), and while it is a great system, 7 is better.

It just is.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Windows 7 is scarcely 3 years old so any PC from mid 2009 and earlier had no good option other than XP

Errr... whuh?

They've had 3 years to upgrade their OS. That's long enough.

Nah. They've had since 2006 to upgrade from XP. The notion that they can keep using an 11 year old system is quite laughable, really, and I for one welcome the games that ditch support.

To be fair, Vista was such a pile of carefully handpicked slime that it's impossible to fault someone for staying miles away and clutching their XP for a while. However, there is no reason not to use 7 anymore, as it's initial problems are now gone.

Well, for what it's worth I switched to Vista in 2007 and it was awesome. No more random crashed with XP and other assorted bullshit.

But then I did make sure to buy a computer that could run it.

And to be fair: *every* complaint people had against Vista was levelled agains XP in 2001. Bloated? Check. Ugly? Check. System hog? Check? Expensive? Check. Crashy? Check.

Let's be honest: XP was a worse than Vista ever was until they released SP2. Only then did it actually become at least decent.

It has been proven in many scenarios, that no matter how horrible something is, people will get used to it. XP, even in it's most abysmal stage of life, *never ever ever* had a memory footprint the size of Vista. Windows 7 and 8 have a THIRD of Vista's memory footprint. And even if XP "was once bad" as you claim, at least it got good eventually, something Vista can never claim. Whether or not you personally learned to live with it's atrocious state is irrelevant, like a prisoner on a stretch bench in medieval times eventually stopped feeling the pain.

As a photographer, 3D artist, game dev, audio/music and video producer, Vista was a completely impossible work platform on any hardware. Sure, some random average joe who uses his computer for games and internets might not have such a big problem with it, but professionals using heavy applications did.

Of course it didn't have a memory print the size of Vista. In 2001 128 MB was probably average memory (I might be off. It's eleven years ago), but XP would eat a lot of that for people running a machine built for Win98 if they installed XP on it.

As for Vista getting good or not, I'd say it was perfectly reasonable after SP1 (unlike XP that needed 2). I've since switched to 7 but the 4 years I ran Vista I had precisely 2 crashes . That's more than I can say for the 5 years I ran XP.

Now, I'm not a super important professional or anything, so I'm probably just an average Joe, only using my computer to games, a bit of programming and porn, but I do remember the bloody racket around XP and it's release in 2001.

 

[ResonanceSD]

so there's no requirement to upgrade yet, if you don't want to.

Well unless you want to stop playing new games, then yes, you might want to consider Vista. Which is closer architecturally to 7 than it is to XP.

 

[Odbarc]

Windows XP was good. I still use the XP set-up on my computer.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Windows XP was good. I still use the XP set-up on my computer.

Play anything that's come out in the past 6 months?

 

[teh_gunslinger]

XP is going to be supported until 2014, last I heard, so there's no requirement to upgrade yet, if you don't want to.

Of course not. Conversely there is no reason for developers to support it if they don't want to.

It's up to you to decide if the games that don't support it are important enough.

 

[TheOrb]

I prefer Xp. I know how to use it, and it works just fine.
7 is too jarring of a difference for me, it looks too shiny and sleek. That and my computer probably couldn't run it.

 

[Garland]

Windows XP was good. I still use the XP set-up on my computer.

Aye, I too still use XP (for what I believe has been 8 years) with no problems. I fail to see how the removal of XP compatibility as progress, in my opinion graphical prowess (which seems to be the primary focus when upgrading since around 2005) should take second seat to availability (the more people with the ability to play or obtain your game, the better), but I don't use my PC for gaming anyways so I suppose it changes little for this XP user.

 

[surg3n]

If it encourages developers to make use of DX10+ features, then it's a good thing - but lets be honest, it's probably about saving money on QA and bug fixing.

I dual boot, because I have so much software that just won't run on Win7, probably a couple of thousand pounds worth of software that I don't want to update, or pay more for. Really, Win7 is just for games, I don't mind having a fairly clean Win7 install for playing games, if I need to do any real work, I need to use XP. For games, I'm resigned to the fact that a Win7 install is fairly vital, there's no point in fighting it, not unless you are prepared to miss out on the big titles.