Will Vista Run Your Games?

mikemuch writes "With Vista reaching the more stable beta 2 designation, Jason Cross at ExtremeTech decided to run a slew of popular PC games -- Oblivion, F.E.A.R, GTA, Civ IV, WoW, and more -- on the OS to see what will and won't run, and how well. His findings are encouraging, but unsurprisingly the OS is not quite ready for prime time. Some work is needed on the part of driver writers, Microsoft, and game developers to get the gaming experience ready for launch day. The biggest problem he found was StarForce copy protection and a performance drop-off in many of the games when using anti-aliasing. From the article: 'With Microsoft proclaiming a "PC gaming renaissance" around the launch of Vista, they need to really deliver a fantastic experience, and it's not quite there yet.'"

Why is this even a question?

[entmike]

Of course Vista will run a majority of its back catalogue. If they want to make money, of course it will support the major titles. I'm sure as always there will be kinks to work out, but are we really going to have a discussion about how it potentially won't? Microsoft's track record has gotten better for its backwards compatibility over the years, at least in my book.

Re:I'm glad they confirmed this myth...

[jeriqo]

It's Vista vs XP not AA vs not AA

Re:Vista is backward compatible...?

[__aaclcg7560]

Oh, I don't know... Is $600+ for a video game console or $60 per game is stupid?

Microsoft will be pressuring developers to create Vista-only games to force gamers and consumers to upgrade to Vista. This happened during the transition from Windows 98 to Windows XP.

Re:Why is this even a question?

[PFI_Optix]

100% backward compatibility is a stupid expectation. Considering the technical hurdles to get DOS- and Win9x-native software to run on what is essentially a rework of Win2K, I think they did a great job of providing compatibility that didn't have to be there.

Apple and Linux aren't any better about running 6- to 10-year-old software. OSX just refuses to run quite a few old programs, and Linux just drives you insane trying to sort out dependencies and versions and all the rest of that fun stuff.

When it's done right, Linux is probably the most backwards-compatible...but XP's compatibility is somewhere in the middle, and much easier than Linux...when it works.