Some people say the death of xp gaming was Bioware dropping support while others note that the latest Bioware games have been less than epically received.

To be clear;
For this post xp gamers use xp 64bit… the fact that Bioware still supports xp 32 bit users is irrelevant.

Some back ground;
Bioware has two flagship games (Mass Effect & Dragon Age) as well as the starwars (knights of the old republic) online attempt.
Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age 1, Mass Effect 2 & Dragon Age 2 will play on a XP 64bit machine.
Mass Effect 3 won’t but it’s the starwars game that really nails the lid shut because Bioware asked several XP 64bit gamers to play-test their game as a beta before changing system specs for the final release.

The result;
IMO dropping xp 64bit from the list was inevitably a marketing decision but A lot of xp gamers felt betrayed by this move because {they had just proved} the game (beta) worked fine on xp 64bit machines so the exclusion of xp 64bit machines from retail release was seen by many as a clear “fuck you” from Bioware.

XP?

As in Windows XP the 12-year-old operating system that's three versions ago? Why the hell is BioWare or any game still supporting it?!?

Because people still use it?

Because of fanboys 'n girls?
After all those shitty Windows releases before, XP has generated quite some fanbase.

And as far as I understand it's only the relatively uncommon 64-bit version as well.

For many people, it's only 1 version old. Few people count Vista and 8 as "versions".

I'm sure all 6 of them will get over it eventually. :P

xp rules, hail xp

But surely x64 XP was never really fully supported by anything at any time? I remember trying to make a full conversion, but couldn't, because drivers, games, software varied greatly in compatibility. Too much hassle :(

This is moot. Most developers never supported XP 64-bit so you knew going in that you were using an operating system they did not support. Extended Support for Windows XP 32- and 64-bit versions ends on April 8, 2014, at which point any developer obligations are at an end.

BioWare's next game, Dragon Age: Inquisition, uses DICE's Frostbite 3 engine which requires DirectX 11 and therefore can't run on either version of Windows XP.

Why can't I play Mass Effect 3 on Windows 3.1?! Thanks a lot, Bioware!

I thought this post was about experience points being removed from RPGs... I read 3/4 of the first post before I realized it wasn't. Sometimes I think I might be mentally disabled....

I did use XP x64 for a good while, but it was never intended for home or hobbyist use, and only sold to the same long after Vista had already been released (at least I never saw it in online stores selling to home users until then - I ... acquired it elsewhere). It was more closely related to Server 2003 than to XP x86 and was only intended for corporate customers with memory-heavy applications, build by their demand even, if I recall correctly.

I had Win XP x64 (because 8GB ram). It was a good OS helping me trough the dark times of new Vista until W7 arrived. Could run anything I wanted with it just fine. But by the time SWTor came I already upgraded to W7. I always had to explain what the x64 means whan somebody looked at my screen, it was a very unknown OS.

Bioware is maybe responsible for a lot of stuff but I never heard of the nonsense that they stopped XP gaming. If somebody is responsible its Microsoft because they stopped supporting a OS they already stopped selling several years ago. And as much as I like to occasional bash Microsoft for the big amout of dumb stuff they say & try, in that case I could understand them. XP had its run, it did its job on yesteryears hardware as a commercial OS.

It fell victim to the greatest killer: Time

LOL! You're definitely not the only one who opened this thread expecting to see that!