Another Quick Vista Rant

After commenting on the last news bit about Falling Leaf trying to get people to buy Vista games in the hopes they'll run at some point on XP - a good question comes up:

What's so wrong with Vista?

Honestly, I don't have anything against Vista. I think it sounds interesting - but it doesn't offer me anything compelling as a user to justify the cost. What do I need any new fancy UI things for? Here is my interaction with my Windows box: I boot, I wait for a desktop, I double click an icon to launch a game.

That's it. So why should I care if windows can float in 3D or spin around or do a little dance? None of the new gaming stuff, like tray and play (or whatever it's called) will make that process any simpler. So there's really only one thing in Vista of interest:

DirectX 10.

And honestly, I haven't seen anything so incredibly compelling about DX10 ... except when Microsoft refuses to make a DX9 version. I wasn't so terribly disappointed in the Lost Planet demo because it didn't use any new shader tricks. I'll be happy to play Unreal Tournament III. I have a relatively stock gaming rig - no powerhouse by any means ... so chances are I'd be dialing back all those fancy features anyway.

No, at the end of the day - Microsoft has packaged nothing of interest to me. And they know it. And that's why they've kicked me to the curb like last week's news. Because if they supported these games, like Halo 2 (and I'm sorry - you can't tell me an Xbox game can't be made to run in DirectX 9 - it only uses DirectX 9 already) and Shadowrun in the same vein as other developers will be doing for users for years to come, then they might not sell as many Vista copies.

There is no other reason for holding a DirextX 9 title like Halo 2 over the heads of XP users. What's sad is that a company of Microsoft's size would stoop to these tactics. Won't Best Buy sell them enough Vista discs this year? Do they really need to kick me around in order to get a few more?

Apparently. And well, Microsoft, that's why my only OS purchase anytime soon will be Leopard.