The "future of PC gaming"? Age of Conan delays DirectX 10 feature until God knows when
May 20, 2008
This week’s MMO media darling is Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. It racked up some impressive tester attendance and some more impressive pre-order figures, and all this in spite of the fact that the game is incomplete.
Players gagging for Windows Vista’s oft-hyped DirectX 10 textures have a bit of wait on their hands and will have to make do with creaky old DirectX 9 for now.
"As Microsoft’s DirectX 10 is undoubtedly the future of PC gaming, Funcom has decided to ship only the DirectX 9 version at launch, giving the team more time to focus on building a DirectX 10 version worthy of Microsoft’s great vision for the future of PC gaming," an official press statement reveals. "This postponement will let Funcom include even more features in the DirectX 10 version of Age of Conan than originally planned."
Yep, it’s definitely "the future" because obviously it isn’t "the now". Funcom has declined to put a precise date on when it will launch.
Will it matter? Well, it’s probably more of an embarrassment for Microsoft than anything as there’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that it was probably a lot to do with Vista’s incredible capacity to turn a decent spec gaming PC in a sluggish, stuttering mess.
Vista has met with its justified share of criticism already anyway, forcing Microsoft to dramatically rethink its plan to phase out Windows XP. So unless Age of Conan really does transform into a WoW-killing giant of an MMO, it will probably be in the clear.
It just would have been nicer if Funcom could have given more warning to those specifically upgrading to DX10 worthy machines as this would have bought them a few months to play with and time to score a better hardware deal.
via 1Up
Written by Ilinx · Filed Under Games
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