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According to an online survey by Valve Software, only one in fifty players who access download service Steam has a DirectX 10-compatible graphics card and Windows Vista installed. In an interview with heise online, Gabe Newell, president of Valve Software, said that Microsoft made a terrible mistake releasing DirectX 10 for Vista only and excluding Windows XP. He said this decision affected the whole industry as so far only a very small percentage of players can use DirectX 10.
When developing cross-platform games which are also released fo Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, developers look for the smallest common denominator. And since neither Microsoft's nor Sony's new consoles support Shader Model 4.0 for DirectX 10, only few games use it, he said.
In addition, Newell bemoaned the increasing lack of input device diversity in PC gaming culture. He would like to see controllers like the Wiimote or the Guitar Hero guitar, but since DirectX support for devices like these had increasingly been reduced over the last few years, developers didn't dare implement these expensive innovations.
Yeah, well for the time being, keep writing DX9 games. There are only a handful of DX10 capable graphics cards anyway so I wouldn't expect Steam to have a majority of users on that platform yet. What Gabe seems to forget, was that there was a time when 3D graphics chipsets were the exception and not the rule.
It turns out that the DX architecture is vastly different in Vista than it is in XP. This is part of the motivation behind the significant driver changes from XP to Vista. Backwards compatiblity with XP would have meant a crippled DX10 experience and a reliance on the caps bits.
I for one like where DX10 is heading. According to Wikipedia, DX9 was introduced in December 2002. Even today you can still find folks using DX8 or lesser graphics cards, so in 5 more years, DX10 may be common place.
I'm also confused about Gabes complaint about controllers. I happen to use my Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controller with my Vista Media Center, no problem. If no one is writing games that use alternative HID devices, it has nothing to do with reduced support. I suspect that these are driven by market demands.
Designing a specialized controller for a specific game can be costly. How many people would have wanted a Sims controller to play that game? What would have been the benefit? If anything, PC games have potentially hundreds of more buttons when you consider that you already have a mouse and keyboard. Specialized controllers simply loose out when you consider their limited usage. I don't think I'm alone when I say that I don't really care if HL3 supports a Guitar Hero controller...
I think MS did the write thing, if you don't like Vista or if you do that's a different subject. They needed a cutoff point. You have to draw the line with backwords compatibility for things and DX10 is the start, with DX10.1 even more so. That doesn't mean you can still go with DX9 games for the next few years. But demand will drive up usage and need for DX10 hardware.
There is no games right now, native DX10 games that is. Most have just minor DX10 patches that add a very small level of DX10 code into otherwise native DX9 games.
Until Crysis and other full DX10 games come out, the need to upgrade won't be there.