Such things happens.
Blame the abbrevation-maniacs!

But your interpretation would give some nice headlines:
"With EA as new Publisher, Bioware now abandones its XP-System in upcoming RPGs."

You can do this easily with Audacity, don't know about using built-in Windows software/

Real gamers use Microsoft Bob.

I actually had XP x64 on a laptop that my girlfriend donated to some charity in Africa this week.
I found XP to be very reliable, to work well and be stable. I know once Microsoft drops their support then all XP machines connected to the internet will become easy for attackers to break open as I know there are still many unpatched problems with the OS.

I have moved onto Win7 rather reluctantly and still run XP as a boot system on my tower (I keep the OS disks from all my systems). Now though it is just kept to play games that have issues with Win7 like Splinter Cell and Gorky17.


XP will forever be in my heart. It nearly was a love affair.

Wow off topic much?
I had a giggle reading some of the post so lets explore the metaphor… IMO the car scenario doesn’t work because some people decided that a modern car is safer. I still think a 10 year old Mercedes is much safer on the road than a modern motor scooter even if that scooter does have extra features like a GPS but IMO boats offer the better metaphor because its easier to see how two dinghies can both float on the same river.

Dinghy XP 64 bit has 5 holes in the floor which each has a cork & Dinghy 8 has a hundred holes… lets keep it simple and say that each of these holes has been plugged but that still doesn’t mean the Dinghy 8 is safer than Dinghy XP 64 bit because it has more patches it just means that it needs more patches to make it float.
It only takes one hole to let the outside get inside and the result will be a problem that spreads quickly.

Bioware is a company that happens to make games;
They are entitled to sell or block their games as they believe appropriate but even that’s not really the point because the ill will was created by opening the beta to all xp users and then singling out one group to be blocked.

I have to wonder what the reaction would be if their new Dragon Age 3 didn’t allow windows 8? Would we all just shrug shoulders or would people ask “Why me?… my system can handle the software just as well as these other systems can so WTF”. To get back to star wars {old republic}… one of my guilty pleasures is levelling a Trooper on my daughters 7 computer but it’s a free account so the only effect is that Bioware misses out on a few dollars from me.

I consider it a good game & would have happily purchased it if given the option but there is nothing remarkable about the engine.

To sum up;
I find it hard to imagine the board members sitting at a table like the shadowy figures in the Baldur's Gate series plotting the down fall of the Bhaalspawn called “xp gamers”, I personally think Bioware just made an oversight & its not that hard to see how that can happen when a company gets as big as they are… the trouble with reliance on forum or questionnaire is that you rarely get all the info if you don’t ask the right questions.

If Windows XP is still being supported, it should be supported. To be perfectly fair, XP is over 12 years old. I have to give credit to Microsoft for publishing this OS.

The only problem with that analogy is that it's completely wrong :)

The correct analogy is that Dinghy XP 64bit is made out of thin sheets of paper and will sink if you even look at it wrong, while Dinghy Vista+ actually had some thought put into the materials used to build it and the purpose of actually surviving a storm at sea.

The fact that you seem to lack any understanding of the changes made to the security model post Windows XP doesn't excuse you of making bad analogies.

Now you're really comparing apples to oranges. How about a 10 year old Mercedes versus a current model? You know that they actually do those certifications right, it's called, at least for the European version, Euro NCAP.
But it is supported, by Microsoft. Nowhere is it mentioned that other developers have to support it. Would it be nice if they did? Sure. Would it make business sense? Less and less by each passing day.

To a certain extent the fact that this discussion is going on proves that people still want to use the OS for what ever reason, and the cold hard fact that the majority of big business still uses it. Where I come from at least.

I just wish directX could be ported to Linux so we can dump windows whatever version for gaming completely.

cheers MarkL

But how many people? So far really only the OP seems to be all for it, most of the 'discussion' is people laughing that someone expects modern games to fully support it. As for business computers, they're irrelevant to gaming.

XP users can't moan about a sodding thing. They're the one clinging onto the past. If they can't move on then screw them! Bioware shouldn't have to keep back dating for something that should of been gone years ago.

On that subject
You'll quite often find legacy computers at universities because old lab equipment simply won't interface with newer computers. I recently had a blast from the past running Win 98 and using floppies...

4 years is a long time in computer terms though, and as time has gone by more and more games have been released that make proper use of DirectX 10 & 11, which tips the scale more and more in Win7's favour. And unlike an old car, which is its own separate unit that don't need to communicate with other units or have modern things used on it, a computer does.

Also, having to develop for more systems costs the developers more money. A game that runs perfectly win in Win7 might have issues in WinXP.

I think you're overemphasizing the role of a developer and completely ignoring that of the publisher. I'm not saying that EA chose to cease supporting Win XP, but if the decision was made, it would probably have come from the top.

The thing is that it's going to be supported until April of next year. It's basically dead from Microsoft's p.o.v. No one is betting the farm on dead tech nor should they.

Well it (XP) had a great run, I just wish that publishers wouldn't abandon it after MS officially drops support next year. Too many great windows games are lost this way. It would be awesome if MS or some other software publisher would develop an offline package emulator that would work older games. Something like DosBox, but for Windows. Virtual machine does this, but it doesn't fully support 3D.

I agree almost completely. Although, I will point out that XP doesn't have proper IPv6 support, for some reason, and next April will be the last security patches written by MS. So, anybody who wishes to use XP after that point, is either going to need to find their own custom patches or deal with the security being completely non-existent.

Personally, I'm migrating over to Linux as I'm not interested in Vista and I'm not interested in buying a license for any newer versions of Windows. Windows 8, I'm definitely looking at you.

The GoGs work fine on my Ubuntu machine with Crossover. PlayOnLinux/Mac and pure wine should also do the trick. No need to run an insecure, un-patched OS.

Personally I never liked XP. Out of the box it exposed ports to the network and ran without a firewall. It was a malware sponge and it still is because many users are logged on as admin (it's a pain in the but to run as a regular user), After that MS stared to bolt on some security hardening features.