DirectX9: Has this been holding back PC strategy game innovation?

"The problem stems from a catastrophic decision made at Microsoft: not giving DirectX 10 to Windows XP users."

- Brad Wardell, CEO of strategy game specialist Stardock, explains why he think strategy games have been held back over the last few years. The Stardock founder says in the company's 2012 report [PDF] that strategy games in recent times have been a mixed blessing. "There have been some great titles released," he says, "but the innovation in strategy games has been diminishing. This is not the result of a lack of game design or inventive thinking." He says it comes down to Microsoft's decision not to supply Windows XP users with DirectX 10 as standard, instead leaving them with DirectX 9 support. "As a corollary, Microsoft continuing to sell 32-bit versions of Windows well after the hardware stopped being natively 32-bit has held back PC game development immensely," he continues. "Game developers have been stuck with DirectX 9 and 2GB of memory for the past decade. While this hasn't harmed first person shooters (they only have to manage a handful of objects at once), it has been poisonous to other genres." Meanwhile, DirectX 11 allows studios to go crazy with the shader anti-aliasing, says Wardell, and lowers the development capability requirements on having a multi-core-based simulation. "There are whole classes of games waiting to be made that require these kinds of advances," he adds. "Luckily, after a decade-long wait, we are nearing critical mass. The days of games supporting 32-bit OSes is, thankfully, coming to an end. DirectX 10 as a minimum requirement has also arrived."