A tweet from Johan Andersson from this past summer offers a revelation not noted here at the time, as the tweet seems to confirm
rumors from 2007 that the Frostbite 2.0 engine that will power the upcoming
Battlefield 3 will not support Windows XP, saying: "Frostbite 2 is primarily developed for DX11. XP & DX9 is _not_ supported, 64-bit OS is recommended. Lots of time to upgrade if you haven't!" The thread about this on the
Electronic Arts Forums also has comments noting this was revealed already, and there are slides in
DICE's SIGGRAPH 2010 presentation indicating Frostbite 2.0 will only support DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. Thanks James via
BF3Blog.