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Microsoft Graphics

Microsoft Makes Direct X 11.1 a Windows 8 Exclusive 553

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the year-of-the-linux-desktop dept.
BluPhenix316 writes "Microsoft has made Direct X 11.1 a Windows 8 Exclusive. I think this is merely an update to make Direct X more integrated with Windows 8. Is this going to be the trend? To lock you into the OS updates so Windows 7 doesn't last as long as Windows XP has?" The update is pretty minor, but it does add Stereoscopic rendering, and there seemed to be an implication that no new DirectX updates after this will be made for Windows 7.
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Microsoft Makes Direct X 11.1 a Windows 8 Exclusive More

Microsoft Makes Direct X 11.1 a Windows 8 Exclusive

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  • Let's hope Steam on Linux gathers... steam (Score:5, Interesting)

    by e065c8515d206cb0e190 ( 1785896 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:13PM (#41962511)
    and we won't have to put up with this anymore.

    • Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrEricSir ( 398214 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:32PM (#41962703) Homepage

      Instead of worrying about DirectX, you can worry about which versions of which distro has a driver for your graphics hardware.

      But sure, the grass is always greener and all that.

      • Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Informative)

        by nschubach ( 922175 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:57PM (#41962881) Journal

        Why would you worry about which version has your graphics drivers? Ubuntu, which will be the only distro for the near future with Steam support, will have the major drivers available. If you choose to use another, it's up to you to get it to work until they decide to branch out to another distribution.

        http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/ [valvesoftware.com]

        Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we’re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn’t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.

        • Right, but Ubuntu will only have drivers for certain GPUs. If yours isn't one of them, forget it.

          • ... so the makers of those GPUs get rewarded with money. Others may see some benefit in providing Linux source drivers to get some of this money. It needs to start somewhere, and the big problem up until this point, is there wasn't enough reason to. With so much being web-based now, Microsoft trying the Apple-style lock-in on the desktop, and now this, there's never been a better time.

          • Right, but Ubuntu will only have drivers for certain GPUs. If yours isn't one of them, forget it.

            This is no different to Windows. Windows driver support is especially poor if you have a GPU older than 3 years. The reality is that Windows has better support for new hardware than Linux, but the complete reverse is true for older hardware.

        • Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Funny)

          by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2012 @01:09AM (#41964605) Journal

          So in the future, it will not be booting Windows for games and Linux for work, but booting Ubuntu for games and Mint for work?

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Let's hope Steam on Linux gathers... steam (Score:5, Funny)

      by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @11:40PM (#41964175)

      and we won't have to put up with this anymore.

      You're jumping the gun there. This headline just in: No new games plan to use Direct X 11.1. Why? Gamers aren't morons and only morons buy Windows 8 and gaming companies want customers.

    • Let's hope Steam on Linux gathers... steam

      *sunglasses* yeeeaaahh?

  • Well there's 11.1 reasons to use OpenGL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan B. ( 20610 ) <slashdot&bryar,com,au> on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:15PM (#41962529)

    As per the subject, this just adds to the reasons for using OpenGL

    • Great. Now if only the big studios will make the switch.

      Indie developers have been using OpenGL for ages. Windows will continue to be the gaming platform of choice so long as Call of Duty and Madden continue to push the version of DirectX necessary.

      It's not surprising move though. I believe Microsoft started this with XP (DirectX 9c?), and have been doing it since. There were no negative repercussions then, and I honestly doubt there will be with DirectX 11.1.

      Of course, if Windows 8 utterly tanks, as it pro

      • Re:Well there's 11.1 reasons to use OpenGL (Score:5, Informative)

        by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:05PM (#41962941) Homepage Journal

        Solution: don't buy from the big studios. Send them an email telling them that you aren't buying, and tell them why. Inform them that the indies are supplying your needs, with OpenGL compatible games. Problem solved.

        • Re:Well there's 11.1 reasons to use OpenGL (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:08PM (#41962993)
          Yes and watch as they laugh at you and continue to sell millions of copies to gamers who don't give a shit whether their game is using OpenGL or not.

        • But big studios make all the fun games. Sure, indie developers make standouts from time to time (Amnesia, Braid, etc), but I like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonored. These are way too involved for an indie group to make. And since it's not going to make one lick of difference if I send them an email or not, I'd rather just do what's necessary to play them since we only live once anyway.

      • Re:Well there's 11.1 reasons to use OpenGL (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Yvanhoe ( 564877 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:46PM (#41963355) Journal
        Well, Valve considers Windows 8 as a threat, ports Steam under linux, put pressure on video card constructors to create better linux port of their drivers. This could very well make OpenGL the future standard.

        • People seem to forget that Steam is just a platform to sell games, an online store. It doesn't port your games. So Valve putting Steam on Linux means very little, unless companies start porting their games to Linux.

          For that to happen, there will have to be a worthwhile amount of sales for existing Linux titles. Publishers will need to see that the cost of the port will be worth it. Remember it isn't as simple as "Just use OpenGL and you can port it!" Each platform takes work and QA and that means money. The

        • This could very well make OpenGL the future standard.

          I know I'm playing devil's advocate more than usual, but... if it weren't for DirectX, what would compete with OpelGL to ensure progress?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah the only problem is getting developers to support it, and after the 3.x fiasco, with all hands on the tiller plenty of developers are still swearing it off. Though it does seem to be changing with the 4.x version. But it has it's own image to repair among the community first.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Vista couldn't do it with major overhaul and upgrade to DX9 in form of DX10 which was Vista exclusive.

      DX11.1 improvements are miniscule in terms of actual upgrades to DX11. Win8 is almost as bad in comparison to 7 as Vista was to XP.

      I don't really see this working as a reasonable reason for the switch. If it was, we'd have seen the jump back in Vista times.

  • What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:17PM (#41962541) Homepage

    If a company releases a new product, they have to add new features to get you to buy it. Why add features to a product people have already bought when they're trying to push the new shiny?

    The real story would be if they didn't continue with security updates and bug fixes, but I doubt that's the case.

    • It goes beyond adding features; it's also about allocating resources to build compatibility for multiple versions of the OS, test on multiple versions and support multiple versions. "The new shiny" is not the issue. Windows 8 is Microsoft's upgrade path, if you want to continue to be current, you upgrade. Windows 8 has not made Windows 7 obsolete, it just means you need to be happy where you are.

  • Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by santax ( 1541065 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:18PM (#41962561)
    The big game-companies and the indies know that only newly bought pc's and laptops will have win8. Nobody else is going to make the switch and I assume a majority of new buyers will 'downgrade' to win7. So they won't develop for it. Maybe they use the api as a extra option, but they all will make sure their games run on win7. Because win8 is going to be the new ME/Vista. Nice on tablets, but keep that crap away from my desktop.

  • I still can't tell the difference betwen DX9 and10 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:19PM (#41962571) Homepage Journal

    Supposedly the big draw for Vista was the coming of DX10 and all that entailed. Side by side comparisons of DX9 vs DX10 were so minor the magazines (yes, those still existed in 2006) had to draw red circles around the detail, they made wireframe renders of DiRT so you could see all the extra triangles in the flags and water... that you couldn't see without the help, along with paragraphs explaining how what you couldn't see was so high tech.
     
    I certainly can't tell the difference between DX10 and DX11, and 11.1a has got to be so minor as to be ignored by developers -- why would you want to alienate your customer base like that? Like microsoft, they're in the business to make money too. Whatever gains were had with the tessellation improvements in DX10 were offset by the improvements in technology; it's just too hard to tell the difference between DX versions these days.
     
    Has rendering technology finally matured?

    • Re:I still can't tell the difference betwen DX9 an (Score:5, Informative)

      by SOOPRcow ( 1279010 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:29PM (#41962669)
      It's not just about visuals, it's also about performance. It is now much cheaper (GPU utilization wise) to do today what was done yesterday. Also, keep in mind that a lot of games don't have that great of visuals because they limit themselves to match consoles. The Call of Duty franchise is a perfect example of this. Anyway, take a look at this to see what is new. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh404562(v=vs.85).aspx [microsoft.com] Also, this is what games could be doing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duSIE2TkpH4 [youtube.com]

      • Re:I still can't tell the difference betwen DX9 an (Score:4, Informative)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:21PM (#41963137)

        Early on in DX10 times, it was the exact opposite. Switching to DX10 renderer cost around 10-30% performance over what you would get on DX9.

        It wasn't until DX11 and win7 that we started to see games that would actually have proper support that didn't come with a massive performance hit when switching from DX9 to DX11. And even so, DX11 still generally is a net fps loss because of the extra features that put extra load on the hardware. Load that isn't there in DX9.

    • Re:I still can't tell the difference betwen DX9 an (Score:4, Insightful)

      by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:08PM (#41962989)

      Has rendering technology finally matured?

      It's the game developers that have matured. The technology hasn't changed that much -- but the developers have gained experience and understanding. They aren't willing to jump to the latest version just because it's the latest version anymore. They have some business sense now; Which is why the Windows 8 app store looks like a barren desert. Developers know they won't make money there. Same with game developers -- they go where the money is, not where the marketing is. So when you're looking at DX10 versus DX11; The API doesn't make much difference in performance, so why not stick with something supported by more video cards out there, and better optimized in newer video cards anyway?

      The developers have matured -- they have a business sense now, not just technical proficiency. DX11.1 can bite their shiny metal ass. Nobody will be developing on it for years to come.

      • I second the above. I work at a rather successful game company and on Windows we target, no joke, Win98. We make family friendly games and our target is, as you might have guessed, the entire family. Since most people aren't hardcore their systems are average on years old hardware at best, and while many families have hand-me-down boxes and laptops now those are running *even* older hardware. If our games run like crap on someone's ancient box they won't blame the box, they'll blame us, and then not pla

    • Rendering technology is waiting for the next generation of consoles. Devs are scared of doing pc-exclusive "super-graphics" because it will be PC-only and that market is mired in doubt of piracy and confusing sales numbers thanks to the myriad of digital options which aren't listed in the regular sales numbers.

      Nothing radical will happen in the near-future apart from input methods such as Oculus Rift.

    • Re:I still can't tell the difference betwen DX9 an (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Z34107 ( 925136 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @10:04PM (#41963511)

      I was actually excited when I first saw DirectX 10 screenshots. You actually get foliage [incrysis.com] with DirectX10, especially in the third set. (Check out the mountains in the back.) Pity that Vista's poor uptake meant nobody besides Crysis or Hellgate: London did much with with it.

      DirectX 11 [youtube.com] was even more impressive--tesselation essentially gets you a hojillion transformable polygons for free. Check out the crowd [pcgameshardware.com] animated entirely in GPU hardware.

      If you really can't tell the difference, just rejoice, quietly, that all of your gaming needs were met nine years ago. You'll never be tempted to buy a new video card for that XP rig.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        And yet in your example, the developers still felt the need to clearly label in ALL CAPS which one was which.

  • Standard Operating Procedure (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Yarhj ( 1305397 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:23PM (#41962589)
    Isn't this basically what they did back with Vista and 7? After the legacy-support nightmare (from Microsoft's perspective) that was XP I expect Microsoft is tired of supporting old software on old systems. I can't say that I blame them -- at some point you just have to draw a line in the sand and say "I'm not supporting 5.25" floppies anymore."

    We can argue about exactly when they should stop supporting old OSes, but at some point it makes sense to move resources from your old product to your new product.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Threni ( 635302 )

      > We can argue about exactly when they should stop supporting old OSes, but at some point it makes sense to
      > move resources from your old product to your new product.

      We're arguing that windows 7 is not an `old os` and that its unrealistic to expect people who've bought a computer 2 months ago to now buy another one, or pay for an upgrade they don't want just to take advantage of a new graphics subsystem which would work perfectly well under Windows 7. If people voted with their feet and refused to bu

  • So? (Score:2)

    by alen ( 225700 )

    Anything out there requires it?

    Nope?

    Non issue

    Unless the new os sees adoption developers won't care

  • So? (Score:3)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:25PM (#41962613)

    I'm hardly a Microsoft fan, but I don't expect them to just keep churning out new software for their old products. Why should they support older versions of Windows for new versions of their software?

    • Windows XP support will stop in 2014. It seems strange that Win 7 updates to DirectX would stop in 2012.

      • Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:55PM (#41962871) Journal

        It is more complicated than that. DirectX requires WDDM which is aero and 3D composition GPU support starting with DX 10. WDDM 1.2 is not compatible with any other kernel. A rewrite would be needed that would make WIndows 7 not Windows 7 anymore and break video and CAD software and piss off the corporate users.

        DirectX 11.1 uses this in an abstraction layer.

        This is why IE 9 is not available for XP. It has nothing to do with MS forcing users to upgrade. Its smooth graphics and font rendering require all that to make it smoother than FF or Chrome which rely on DirectX 9. IE 10 as a result is Win 8 only at the moment until it is rewritten for the older WDDM 1.1 and DIrectX11.

        • Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)

          by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:31PM (#41963225) Journal

          It is more complicated than that.

          What, are you new here?

          That is NOT how we react to Microsoft stories,

          First of all, you didn't use the proper "M$" when referring to Microsoft, and on top of that you tried to be reasonable and did not bring up throwing chairs or monkey boy or Bob or even mention BSDs one time.

          And not a single cuss word.

          I'm not sure you and Slashdot are a good fit.

  • Didn't work with Vista (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:27PM (#41962633)

    The baseline requirement in nearly all games being released today is still DX9, because that's what XP supports. MS absolutely failed in trying to leverage gaming requirements as a means to pawn off unwanted upgrades on users. Because of that previous failure, DX10/11 still feels new to most people and they won't be demanding upgrades for it anytime soon. In the meantime, the delay in new DX feature adoption gives OpenGL-based open source/indie game developers time to catch up, just as before. And more OpenGL means less dependence on Windows as a whole, so this is a win-win-win situation.

    Just like tying new IE releases to Windows upgrades. Chrome, Firefox, etc. cannot thank MS enough for that.

    • Re:Didn't work with Vista (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:24PM (#41963161)

      They're DX9 because that's what XBOX360 essentially "sorta kinda" renders with. It makes no sense costs-wise to add PC-only DX11 features into ports beyond bare minimum, if even that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by edxwelch ( 600979 )

      Not true anymore. About 50% of upcoming new games require direct X 10 as minimum, for example: Assassin's Creed III, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Company of Heroes 2, Total War: Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, XCOM: Enemy Unknown

  • New WDDM version is the reason (Score:5, Insightful)

    by humanrev ( 2606607 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:29PM (#41962671)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model#WDDM_1.2 [wikipedia.org]

    Sounds like a key feature of DirectX 11.1, the stereoscopic 3D rendering, is a feature of WDDM 1.2 and given WDDM 1.2 is only available in Windows 8, that kinda ties DirectX 11.1 to it as well.

    Windows 7 uses WDDM 1.1. Could Microsoft safely update this to version 1.2 such that DirectX 11.1 could be made available for it as well? Probably (Microsoft developed it all, so there's no reason why they couldn't). Would it be a worthwhile investment for them to do so? Probably not; they're having enough trouble getting people to want to use Windows 8 as it is - forcing people to shift to it in any way possible, no matter how slimey, is not above them.

    I doubt it'll matter much though - you'd have to be particularly crazy to develop a game that requires DirectX 11.1 any time soon. especially given the backlash against Windows 8.;

    • Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)

      by Billly Gates ( 198444 )

      WDDM 1.2 has something called a composer that schedules between CPU and GPU tasks with directX 11.1 on top. It is a major performance improvement and great for power saving features.

      Unfortunately, it can't be backported to Windows 7/XP as they would no longer be Windows 7 and XP anymore as it is a kernel rewrite. IT would break corporate software which is why they love using obsolete platforms for decades as it never changes.

      Well no wonder IE 10 is not available on Windows 7. All that hardware acceleration

      • Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Nikker ( 749551 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:21PM (#41963135)
        As someone who has been using Win8 RC since about August, throwing the whole desktop on the GPU isn't quite as good as I had hoped. My example is as follows. My hardware specs are AMD FX-6100 @ 3.7GHz, Radeon HD 7850, 16GB RAM(1600). When running iTunes/Winamp visualizations on one monitor (windowed or full screen) the GPU usage skyrockets (as per Open Hardware Monitor) and the entire UI on both screens becomes less than a slide show. CPU usage rests at about 10%. Now whenever you run a mildly GPU intensive task in a window your system basically becomes completely unresponsive. My GPU is not the best out there but the majority of systems out there ship with much less, I can't feel a bit less then ambitious that this won't effect most people negatively overall.

        As for your claim that it would require a "kernel rewrite" I have to say I'm impressed. Apparently you know the implementation of the system which apparently up to now was believed to be closed source. I am curious how you know how the kernel would have to be "re-written" when according to the version numbers they just went from 6.1 to 6.2.

    • Re:New WDDM version is the reason (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SplashMyBandit ( 1543257 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:43PM (#41963331)
      OpenGL has had support for stereoscopic rendering *forever*. OpenGL works on Windows (XP to 8), Linux, Mac, Unix and almost all embedded devices (eg phone; athoguh that is the OpenGL ES variant). Requiring an O/S upgrade for a trivial feature increase in DirectX shows just how borked the designs of DX and Windows are.

  • Stereoscopic 3D (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dagamer34 ( 1012833 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:30PM (#41962679)
    Honestly, the only thing important to DirectX 11.1 besides some optimizations is a standardized way to support 3D instead of proprietary nVidia 3D vision and AMD HD3D. And if you don't care about S3D, then 11.1 is a non issue. Sounds like a bunch of FUD to me. Regardless, until you see a bunch of DirectX 11.1 exclusive games and DirectX 11 support is dropped (which will never happen), people are ranting about nothing.

  • They did it with Vista, too (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rix ( 54095 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:31PM (#41962691)

    And no one bought that any more than they'll be buying 8.

  • Right... like every vendor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saleenS281 ( 859657 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:35PM (#41962735) Homepage
    In other news, Google releases android 4.2 with a new camera, a new keyboard, and smoother rendering. They aren't porting any of these features back to 2.3 or 4.0. Is this what it's come to?

    Linux has incorporated btrfs into the 3.x kernel and isn't porting it back to the 2.4 kernel. Is this what it's come to? Etc. etc. etc. Yes, this is Slashdot, but the MS bashing was played out sometime around 2006. If you're going to pick on them, at least pick something legitimate and don't whine about them not backporting features ad-infinitum.

  • Part of the Wall (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kawabago ( 551139 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:51PM (#41962839)
    This is part of the new wall protecting Microsoft's new playland it's creating to squeeze unsuspecting customers dry and competition out of the market.

  • They'll Relent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by epp_b ( 944299 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @08:55PM (#41962869)

    Because they'll have to.

    Windows 8 is a toilet (remember, it's the "other version" every "every other version of Windows sucks") and they're forcing obsolescence on Windows 7 far too early.

  • Not a big deal. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by c1t1z3nk41n3 ( 1112059 )
    Gamers tend to upgrade a lot more often than other people to begin with and the Windows 8 upgrade is only 40 dollars. I don't really see a problem here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      That'll be why most games are still DX9 so they can run on XP.

      Yet again, Microsoft can't see any rational reason for people to 'upgrade' to Windows Metro, so they're trying to force them by arbitrary restrictions on DirectX. Yet again, it will ensure that games don't use the new version until about Windows 11.

    • I don't really see a problem here.

      Clearly you haven't tried Windows 8 yet.

      Hell, I'm an MSDN subscriber, so I have access to a number of license keys for personal use, but after my experience with Win 8 at work a few weeks back (in the span of 30 minutes, I managed to crash it twice, forcing a reboot both times, and realized that it clearly wasn't made for a mouse when I kept seeing suggestions that I "tap here to do X"), I have no intention of "upgrading", let alone suggesting that others should pay them $40 to do so. Call me when Win 9 is

  • The Difference Between OpenGL and DirectX (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:12PM (#41963041)

    If you have programmed shaders before you know that new APIs make absolutely no difference in advancing graphics since any graphics effect that has and will ever exist can be programmed using even ancient shader models like GLSL version 2. New APIs serve only to lock users into their own API artificially, even though the graphics capabilities already exist and will be the same for a long time to come. Using shaders, a programmer can do anything using graphics, even things that don't exist yet. All of the effects advancements like SSAO (screen space ambient occlusion) and raytracing are advancements in algorithms that can be easily written in any existing shader language. A new DirectX API version in my opinion is completely useless and only serves no purpose other than to try to get people to buy Windows 8. Programmers don't need a new API to make better graphics, they need creativity and ingenuity using existing shader languages which will never need to change.

    • The Commodore was introduced in 1982, and the graphic hardware was never updated. However, developers were making games with good graphics almost 10 years later, on the original 1982 chipset. In fact, one of the best games released for the PC in the early 1990's (Commander Keen) would have been even better had it been introduced for the C-64. Commodore made their hardware API completely open. If I were a developer now, I would avoid all of the locked in crap and probably use Open GL even if is more of a

  • Again? (Score:3)

    by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:27PM (#41963187)
    They did the same thing with Windows7 and DX10.. The result? Game publishers didn't write DX10 games for a LONG time, and if they did the games would work in DX9 or 10 via a settings change. There are still games out there that don't support DX10. Way to go MSFT... how many times can you shoot yourself in the foot before you finally bleed out?

  • And in other news...Steve Sinofsky is GONE. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Monday November 12, 2012 @09:42PM (#41963311)

    Steve Sinofsky, the "brains" behind Windows 8, has just been given the boot.

    Gee... one wonders why.

    http://allthingsd.com/20121112/breaking-windows-head-steven-sinofsky-to-leave-microsoft/ [allthingsd.com]

    Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky is leaving the company, effective immediately, AllThingsD has confirmed.

    The move comes less than a month after Sinofsky presided over the launch of Windows 8 and Microsoftâ(TM)s Surface tabletâ"products seen as key to the future if the PC software pioneer is to retain its position amid a market increasingly dominated by phones and tablets.

    Sources have said the move came amid growing tension between Sinofsky and other top executives. Sinofsky, though seen as highly talented, was viewed at the top levels as not the kind of team player that the company was looking for. The move is likened by some to the recent ouster at Apple of iOS head Scott Forstall.

    Maybe it's because 8 is a stinker and they have to deep discount the so-called upgrade to 15 bucks just to get people to try it?

    --
    BMO

    • Re:And in other news...Steve Sinofsky is GONE. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13, 2012 @02:09AM (#41964845)

      Maybe it's because 8 is a stinker and they have to deep discount the so-called upgrade to 15 bucks just to get people to try it?

      If that were the case, why put Larson-Green in his place? She's the one behind Metro (and Ribbon before that)...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by N1AK ( 864906 )

        If that were the case, why put Larson-Green in his place? She's the one behind Metro (and Ribbon before that)...

        That's an informative point and it's a shame you posted it AC as it means that many people may not get to see it. Microsoft promoted up the person who has been leading the changes in Microsoft's user interfaces; if anything this means expect more of it.

        I've actually upgraded my home PC to Windows 8 since release. Is it better/worse than 7? I really can't say yet as there are some annoying short

  • perfect answer (Score:3)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2012 @05:19AM (#41965513) Homepage Journal

    The best summary is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

    It's been a while since Microsoft pulled the "oh no, this new version of DirectX couldn't possibly work on earlier versions of Windows" scamgasm, but as the relatively friendly age of Windows 7 is overshadowed by the dawning of the firm's desperate desire to make Windows 8 a cross-platform goliath/software shop, an old habit has returned.

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/12/old-dog-old-tricks-ms-locks-directx-11-1-to-win-8/ [rockpapershotgun.com]

    (reposting because /. stupid UTF-8 non-support mangled the quote the first time)

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