IGN AU: You're pushing DX10 hardware and yet you're limited by the number of people who are running DX10 because of Microsoft's decision…You can read the full interview over here.
Keita Iida: Initially, to some degree, it's in our best interest as the only provider of that solution to have DX10 software as early as possible. And to that extent, maybe if they had made DX10 available on XP, this would've facilitated the development and adoption of DX10 features much faster. Also, the user base would've been higher because people with 8800s who have XP could already have DX10 available to them.
That said, the underlying kernel of the operating system and the code of Vista is a clean-break from XP - it really is. There's not as much legacy code as XP had from [Windows] 98 or 95. It slowed the progress of DX10 development and it slowed the user base, but in the long run, we feel it's not going to have any impact - in fact, it may be better. From a quality assurance standpoint, you have to account for so many variables, it makes sense to make a clean break from legacy hardware specs, and just package Direct3D and Direct X with Vista and just make a future-move that way.
Interview with NVIDIA about Direct X, Crysis and PS3
Posted on Saturday, April 14 2007 @ 0:40 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck