Funcom has announced that they are delaying DirectX10 support for their upcoming MMORPG, Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures.  The explaination from Funcom is that they want to deliver something, “worthy of Microsoft’s great vision for the future of PC gaming”.

All this is fine and dandy, except that Funcom has had DirectX10 on the board for some time.  I saw the tech demos they were running at CES in 2007, that were showing off all of the nifty features that DirectX10 could do for their world.  Again, they had DX10 videos running at E3 in 2007, which made most believe that it was coming.  Now, one day before launch, Funcom decides to let everyone know that it won’t include the very support that it has been touting as a revolutionary feature at launch.  Yes, Funcom is going to include it at some point, but if the game isn’t successful, or does not make the money that Funcom expects, the inclusion of DirectX10 in the future just becomes another pipe dream.

This also stikes another blow at the widespread adoption of Vista among gamers, as DirectX10 is one of the key talking points of Microsof’s new OS.  If a game that has been working with it for two years cannot get it to work the way they want, what does that tell gamers about Vista and DirectX10?

via videogamer.com