Jerykk wrote on Jan 3, 2011, 00:25:
There was a time not long ago when PC gamers *wanted* developers to push the envelope. Year after year of console ports and suddenly everyone is concerned not how well a new game will look and run but how well the ten-year-old one will? How fucking depressing.
There was a time when games were designed exclusively for hardcore PC gamers as well. That time is long past.
Simply put, the difference between DX8 and DX9 was substantial. DX9 could handle visual effects that DX8 could not and these effects were fairly significant. The difference between DX9 and DX10/11 is far less noticeable. In most cases, DX10/11 does the same effects as DX9, only more efficiently. Even with this improved efficiency, running in DX10/11 does not offer noticeably improved framerates so why should gamers care?
In order for MS to convince gamers that it's worth upgrading to DX10/11, DX10/11 games need to be developed that make players go "Wow! I've never seen anything like that with DX9! DX9 games look so outdated now!" Unfortunately, that has yet to occur.
DX10 allows for effects that would be cripplingly slow on DX9. DX11 allows for stuff that is very poorly supported because the focus these days is on the DX9/10-ish console hardware. (That is to say, things we will see the advantage of in the future)
But yes, the driving force behind upgrades should always be the games. I can't speak for you but lots of PC gamers still buy new hardware, unless you're still on a 8800GT or worse, you should be running Vista or Windows 7 by now. Otherwise, what are you getting out of that hardware? Certainly not graphics.