PC gamers shun Vista, sticking with XP
Sat May 10, 2008 12:46PM EDT
See Comments (64)
One of Windows Vista's biggest selling points was that it was the only way you could get DirectX 10, the software component that would be required to play the very latest video games in their full glory. Sure, you could still play games in DirectX 9, but the differences with DirectX 10, Microsoft promised, would be striking. (Check out this video showing the same scene under both systems and you'll see what Microsoft was talking about. You can find loads of similar comparisons online.)
Games like Crysis benefit clearly from the DX 10 upgrade, but that benefit hasn't been enough to push gamers into upgrading to Vista. Historically, those are the very first computer users, living on the bleeding edge, to upgrade to new hardware and operating systems. The statistics from Valve, whose Steam system lets gamers download titles from the web and which collects system information in return, shows that Vista still has less than a 15 percent market share among these users (17.5 percent if you include 64-bit Vista).
That's roughly in line with the total consumer market (14.57%), but it's a real surprise considering the advantages Vista's DirectX 10 offers gamers. There's no way to run DirectX 10 on XP, so the only way to get the very best PC gaming experience is to run Vista. They should theoretically be lining up to buy Vista in droves.
As well, if any computers are powerful enough to run Vista, it's gamers' rigs. Stocked with the latest CPUs, tons of RAM, and the latest video cards, few gamers would encounter the upgrade headaches that have frustrated the rest of the market due to not having the power to handle it.
Of course, that hasn't happened. The figures imply that gamers may simply feel the advantages of a modest graphics upgrade just don't outweigh the other headaches of Vista.
Will gamers eventually come to love Vista? Maybe it will take a truly killer game to finally get folks to upgrade. Of course, everyone thought that Crysis was going to be that title, so we'll have to wait and see.
POLL: What do you think?
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27 Posted by yu237106 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:58PM EDT Report Abuse
Vista is new, different, and so requires a learning Curve. Vista still actually runs games slower then compared to XP. Vista Costs money (It's not a free upgrade). These are the cons. What does it offer? DX10 and the advantages there of. Except that with DX10 "poster child" Crysis, you can actually get the game looking almost identical to DX10-Vista, in DX9-XP with a few behind the scene tweaks. But again with superior performance compared to Vista. So various reasons not to upgrade, and the one reason to do it isn't really a reason at all, yet. And if DX9 Crysis can do almost all that DX10 can, will that be true of other games too? (Where the only limits are artificially enforced?)
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28 Posted by plaga_nerezza on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:14PM EDT Report Abuse
Someone at Microsoft should figure out how to write code and release direct x 10 for windows xp. They have to many programmers that no one can code for an os still on a majority of the customer base that is still under support and life cycle. There is no excuse for that sort of behavior from an organization. It reaks of forcing people to pay for an upgrade. That is wrong.
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29 Posted by maori_yelir on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:05PM EDT Report Abuse
To 26, the internet is a wonderful resource. It's not like I opened up the box and knew how to do everything. Search it on the internet if you want to turn off a feature, there are more than enough things to do that. By the way, UAC is User Account Controls, that's those annoying popups that ask you if you are SURE YOU ARE SURE THAT YOU ARE SURE after every change you make to the computer. Turn that off and 70% of the problems people have with Vista are gone. Use the internet if you don't know how to do it, I'm not giving you a shortcut. Educate yourself about your PC and stop trying to take the instant gratification way out.
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30 Posted by paulecornett on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:02PM EDT Report Abuse
for 26: If you run an os... it is up to you to learn it. Google is your friend. hundreds of tech sites have blogged on it. I wasnt born knowing vista... in fact I use Linux Mint and XP at work. I have little tolerance for people who want things spoon fed to them. Read. Explore. And if you are then still confused... THEN ask. Not before. How did you learn XP? My dad is 62 and he taught himself about LInux. I installed it for him... and showed him the basics (took all of an hour)... and he ran with it. In fact, he calls me less than he did with XP. 29: I totally agree... I made the mistake of 32bit vista.... thinking about trying vista64... but i may just dual LInux Mint 5 when it comes out. A good 60-70% of my windows games run under linux. 27... look up DUH in the dictionary... XP is not a free upgrade either... you either pay for it with a new pc or you get the box (or oem). One of my biggest gripes about the XP vs Vista... is most of today's computer users know nothing of the old OS.... This same argument about speed was hashed out when XP came out. Noone wanted it because it was slow... performed slow in games (compared to 98SE and 2000)... bloated hardware requirements... etc. sound familar? It took to SP2 before XP actually became a decent OS that would not crash as much or have to repair.
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31 Posted by jmeaton03 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:37PM EDT Report Abuse
Really I don't see why people are fussing about Vista. Service Pack 1 is out and Vista has less headaches now. I just migrated over to Vista after making some hardware changes. Suffice to say I find 64-bit Vista more stable and runs all my games perfectly well even some old classics. If you really want to lessen the memory footprint Vista leaves then you will need to tweak it and shut services off you won't even use. Just added a new Motherboard, Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHZ ww/ 4GB RAM.
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32 Posted by rlsuth on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:44PM EDT Report Abuse
I've always been a PC gamer, but it's just become way too expensive now with little reward. The number of games is dwindling and those that do come out, either have draconian protection schemes, system requirements or are just a slightly different version of a game that's already out there. I'm through dropping huge amounts of money on crappy new operating systems, graphics cards and other hardware, not to mention games. If the consoles had keyboard and mouse support, I might head over there.
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33 Posted by coffeemike2k3 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:28PM EDT Report Abuse
Simple solutions for different people: For people with older windows computers: stick with XP. Buying Vista will require $ and get you a worse computing experience. Dual boot with Ubuntu linux. For people buying a new computer: 1)buy a mac (tends to be more expensive) or 2)install XP or linux (such as Ubuntu) in a dual boot configuration with Vista; use Vista only when required for DX10 games. I've tried Vista, XP, Mac, and various linux distros (including Ubuntu). There is no perfect OS for all situations. In my opinion, people who are supporters ONLY of Vista often think of themselves as bleeding edge hardcore computer users. I believe that the real hardcore people have for many years moved to linux/mac/bsd. Vista is actually for mainstream users. Think about it.
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34 Posted by photoguy83 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:10PM EDT Report Abuse
I love my Vista PC's. I have it on my laptop and on my gaming/media PC. I will admit the first few months were sketchy, but I just dual-booted XP and Vista on the same PC, so when I wanted to watch TV in Media Center, I booted Vista; when I wanted to game, I booted XP. Now I exclusively use Vista for both. GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND! Turning off UAC squashed a lot of "bugs", and if you are willing to take the time to configure your system with Vista, you don't deserve to ----- about it. -Turn off UAC -Buy some RAM (at least 4GB) -Get a decent card -Have a dual core processor A lot of people also run Norton anti-virus... which is worse than having a virus in the first place. Viruses eat CPU and RAM and slow your system down. Guess what Norton does? The SAME THING! Turn off your AV software before you game and just don't download anything you aren't comfortable with.
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35 Posted by supertongue_comics on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:49PM EDT Report Abuse
Well for the Valve stats about their users actualling using Vista, you must also look at the game catalog on Steam. I'm currently a user of the Steam service and, if you take a look, Bioshock is, to my knowledge, the only DirectX 10 game on Steam. This means the loyal users who only play games bought through Steam (which can be convenient since the catalog is huge now) really have no need for Vista yet. Sure, I have Vista. It works fine with my games, like Team Fortress 2, Garry's Mod, etc. You just need to know what you are doing. Without the proper knowledge of good hardware, you'll never get anywhere running games with Vista.
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36 Posted by wageslavetd on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:38PM EDT Report Abuse
Sent to Chris Null: Your article on Gaming is wrong. It is false. Firstly, Steam's data shows that a total of 17.5% of their customers use Vista. Please update your article accordingly. Second, according to W3C, NetApplications, XiTi Monitor and OneStat, the current OS share for Vista is about 12.41%. I'm sure you will concede that Steam's users are a subset of Computer users in General. So, being that 17.5% 12.4% your article is **FALSE**. Video Game players are adopting Vista **FASTER** than the rest of the market. But dont let that get in the way of your ignorant, partisan hack-job. The rest of your article ("upgrade headaches" and the like) are just anecdotal bull----- you decided to repeat for the purpose of insulting Vista. A) Vista usage is 17.5% -- update your article please so that it is correct. B) Your entire article is false because Steam's users are more likely to use Vista than the wider market. Though, I'm sure youll take the time to try to use "B" to say that "no one uses Vista" even though it has more than two times the marketshare of GNU/Linux and Mac (OSX and OS9) combined. OS Share Data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_market_share#Summary_table
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37 Posted by wageslavetd on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:38PM EDT Report Abuse
According to benchmarks, XP and Vista perform the virtually the same. Bottom line, update your drivers -- nvidia and AMD are finally getting their drivers fixed. Read this: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2303830,00.asp
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38 Posted by bluesky_asu on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:09PM EDT Report Abuse
Vista is crap...microsoft mostly spreads vista because they jam it down consumers' throats with computers preloaded with it. Vista should go down as the longest suicide note in history...
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39 Posted by rjdrivers on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:42PM EDT Report Abuse
I can hate Vista without Null's help, thank you. The very fact that MS held us hostage to get DX 10 was enough to make me treat Vista like ME, or 2000, and skip it entirely. Add to that the ridiculous DRM restrictions and the high memory requirements, and it was very easy to see XP as a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" OS. Long live XP. I'm buying an extra copy this month (could be the last month to do this)) to put away for my next system build.
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40 Posted by cnull on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:27PM EDT Report Abuse
Post updated to reflect 64-bit Vista numbers
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41 Posted by kupriaa1 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:54PM EDT Report Abuse
Hey Null- to once again state a point that I pointed out to you a while ago- you write for mob mentality. You write to generate hits and comments. You will say anything. No integrity. No journalism.
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42 Posted by maori_yelir on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:05PM EDT Report Abuse
Want to talk about the most biased poll ever... Come on... That is like saying IF YOU VOTE FOR THIS YOU ARE DUMB. I upgraded to Vista consciously and with reason, not because I HAD to.
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43 Posted by paulecornett on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:02PM EDT Report Abuse
as for directx 9 vs 10... it is the same as with 2000 directx 8 vs. 9...
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44 Posted by paulecornett on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:02PM EDT Report Abuse
The difference in performance between xp and vista is all but gone now. Good read: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2303830,00.asp
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45 Posted by michael_harvill on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:18PM EDT Report Abuse
It could be said that this is "unreliable" but being a gamer and listening to other gamers, I notice most of us favor XP.
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26 Posted by growlnroar on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:13PM EDT Report Abuse
I love how all the "experts" on the thread can manage Vista with few/no problems. It's encouraging. Now if they could enlighten the rest of us who don't even know what UAC even stands for, we might be better off. And then they could stop complaining about people who don't know any better. Chris, maybe you'd like to throw up a How-To on finding and nixing this little problem?