Bluesfanboi - is anyone actually saying DX10+ couldn't be made for XP? I saw your comment "I too am amazed at people who confuse business with computer engineering." - I don't think anyone is claiming it's an impossible engineering task (maybe I'm wrong), so you seem to be arguing against people who don't actually disagree with you.
I'm sure DX10 could be made for XP but it makes no sense for business (yes, I mean business, I do understand this) and it makes no sense "morally", for want of a better word. I don't see why Microsoft should add to 8 year old software for free - who else does? Businesses retire codebases, they have to. If not, where is DX9 for 3.1, or for that matter, bump-mapping in DOOM, Flash 10 support for Netscape 1.0 or airbags in the Ford Model T? Projects are done and programmers move on, if you want the latest, you pay. Maybe a couple of years ago it would have made business sense to go to the engineering lengths needed but if so, Microsoft are the biggest losers on that mistake.
It's not impossible to code, just impractical and largely pointless. I don't know of anyone who has ever said (and really meant) it could not be done.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm sure people in the past have said it can't be done, but I've never seen anyone say that who didn't obviously mean it would too expensive (in terms of engineering time and testing and these new drivers you expect to be written) to make sense. As I understand it, it would basically require a Vista compatibility layer to run on XP, so good luck getting any performance or stability out of that. In fact, if MS made and released DX10 for XP, I bet some types of people would quickly be bitching about how it is slow and unstable and it's all a plot to make Vista look good.
This comment was edited on Feb 23, 2009, 18:10.