Halo 2 gamers face Vista upgrade

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4698072.stm

splutter!

bit of bummer really as I've only just got used to XP over 98.

games sell computers... or OSes...

you wanna play... you gotta pay... out both ends...

from the great Bill up high...
Vista Must Sell...
so it has been written... so it shall be done...

:)

--Mike

Well given the fact Halo1 wasnt very hot as an Xbox Port to the PC (I remember the days when it looked like it was going to be the greatest PC game of all time yeeaaaars ago), I cant see myself looking forward to #2, let alone being forced to upgrade my OS just to play it.

Now if Halo2 came bundled free with Vista for it's first few shipments, I may reconsider.

Red: True
Genexi2: True

Vista? Now way! After a year and a half on XP - I'll downgrade next time! 98 rules and I don't care what they say. I would rather be able to play some pure dos games than Halo 2!

I think it'll do more to harm sales of Halo 2 than it will to boost sales of Vista personally. Good marketing scam, but they needed to do it with a better, more popular game.

I don't think it should be a console port. Something that's popular on consoles may be not so popular on PC. They should licence some anticipated PC release... Like Prey! They can because Prey is also coming out for XBOX.

Good idea, badly executed!(tm)

*(tm) TradeMark of Microsoft :D

Good idea? You mean forcing people to buy yet another pointless upgrade? That's a good idea?

Anyone see a slight smiliariy between this and Half Life 2 and Steam?

I heard Halo 2's crap anyway.

Hello.

It's simply the snowflake that starts the avalanche. I'm sure the majority of you know someone who will upgrade simply because of the game.

I also know that other software houses will release either vista only (or vista enhanced) games before too long and so if you want to play those games you'll have to upgrade - and by that time you will want to play the latest games.

And then there are people, like me, who don't play that many games who will just upgrade when they next upgrade their computer. I'm scheduled to rebuild around Christmas so it'll probably be available by then, I'll just wait and see what the options are.

But, regardless, you're all doomed to playing games on vista in the future. Happy thoughts.

Goodbye.

Anything that gets people to spend money is a good idea in my eyes. What other reason is there to make and Market a new product version?

Hey, I wonder if I'll have to re-license my software to all those nice people when vita comes along?

Well, at least you're honest.

You mean back when it was running on a Mac? Yeah, it did look great then. I think I still have the MacWorld presentation somewhere...

For F***'s sake! The Operating System should be minimal and allow the efficient running of programs - nothing more.

I wish there was some (serious) competion in the Operating System business.

The ever advancement of processors are simply gobbled-up by the demands of the latest bloatware and ever higher level languages like Java.

I always liked the fact there is a common standard - ie Windows (which can be advantageous) but we're not going to see the true potential of next gen hardware if Microsoft continue in their current attitude to turning their Operating System into an ever larger, more important than the programs we run, bloatware system that requires a ridiculous amount of hardware before a program is even loaded rubbish - enough is enough.

i agree Steve... but from what i hear... as far as games is concerned anyway, this new version is supposed to step aside and shut down most of the non essential crap... and give the cpu to the game...

... from what i heard.


--Mike

Really? We'll see when it arrives then - but quotes like "unlike other versions of Windows, it will need an advanced video card to get the most out of it.

It is also likely to demand a lot of computer memory and a sizeable hard drive."

And going by their past record I'm not hopefull.

I'd rather they boast about the fact their Operating System runs programs twice as quick - then I'd be impressed.

Mac? Pretty sure it was PC, I got a 10min demonstration of it (150mb MPEG file) on one of my discs somewhere...., and I got it from a PC Gamin mag (back before I had net access).



Aside from the lack of a true DOS environment, I cant stand Win98 after having used XP for the last few years, it's way too unstable on the average pre-built PC, the amount of times they crash on my high school systems setup compared to the XP machines....but to each their own. =\

Windows 98 was awful - WindowsXP is their best version of Windows by far - just stop upping the hardware specs.

yeah Steve... that's probably for all the transparent mac 'aqua' like stuff they're adding to the ui...

but i agree with you about the OS being a minimal resource consumer, just what's needed to support houskeeping and such... let the apps have the machine...

--Mike

I like Windows 2000. Like, I cannot stand a computer running XP in default mode; I always change them to the "classic" setting.

Microsoft still ass raping its customers I see.

I only care about compatibility. So far Win98 is the only one that allowed me to play games that were new releases (at the time) and also restart in pure DOS to enjoy good old titles.
I also know that we all have different experiences with OSs but 98 SE never crashed on me without a reason. I love it... If developers/publishers are going to come up with Vista-only products it would most certainly make me buy VirtualPC this time...

Windows 98 was a nightmare of incompatibility - stable then efficient are the 2 main attributes of an Operating System - or they should be.

The Blue Screen of Death - or what ever you wish to call it were far more commmon with 98.

I'm looking forward to vista, but Halo 2 for PC. I think the Halo series has become highly overated. The first one was good and had some nice things going in with it. But was extremely repetitive in later levels.

Halo 2 was even worse and completely ruined the games for me to the point that I don't have any interest in Halo 3 whatsoever. Hope 360 gets something better to flaunt than another overhyped Halo game by the time PS3 and Revolution arrive.

I use 98 still, still runs everything I want too, and at half of the hardware required too (except games which is still about the same)
I still hate XP but I can't imagine how bloaty Pista will be. You'll probably need a gig of ram and a DVD drive to boot up the installation. www

Pista? LOL!

I'm with ENAY on this one - I've been using 98SE since it came out until 2004... I've never wished that I had a different OS insted which I do quite often now. And my old computer (p1-100 MHz, 16 Ram, 1 GB) is still succesfully running w98se and is still used without any problems by an elderly lady.

I know what you mean, and of course if you don't even use a PC for games playing why would you ever want to upgrade. You can word process, do gfx, go on the internet in 98 and the comparably bloaty OS to match with the higher hardware, in the end it's no difference. My P2 333Mhz is still my favourite machine of choice.

And as I said before in many threads, Win98 is becoming quite safe because many viruses aren't compatible with it, only with Xxtra Pants ;) wwww

Enay, Anatoly I think we basically agree that Operating Systems should be efficient and undemanding on system resourses - but XP is quite impressive in it's stability and compatibility - quite fast too.

But I see no justification what-so-ever to add to the minimum specs for XP.

Unfortunately I do and that's why I've upgraded in 2002 and then 2 years later to a new computer with XP... My next system will probably feature VirtualPC which by that time will be able to function like a good second pentium and run resource hungry games full speed...

Stability maybe, but compatibility?!?!?! I'm pulling my hair out quite often because of this. At the moment (after installing SP2) some of my 16-but windows applications stopped working. XP doesn't have mscdex emulation which makes most of the dos cd games unplayable, same with sound card drivers or dos timer... Thank God for DosBox! At least I can play some of the games... But I also can't play many win95 games... So that's pretty much why I'm so mad at XP... And service packs and updates seem to make it even worse.

EDIT:

Fast for a resource hungry hog... After installing SP2 the computer is loading at least three times slower and takes forever to shut down (It used to be the other way with previous Win versions...). Also 6 scvhost.exe processes doesn't help the situation...

To be fair, the vast majority of people aren't running software which is 10 plus years old. If you absolutely must run ancient software then running an ancient os is perfectly sensible. But you can't expect the developers to cripple the OS for everyone else by maintaining compatibility with every little program that hardly anyone is running. With XP, Microsoft did the right thing for the vast majority of people. It was never going to please everyone, but I think it came as close as it could ever have done.

How about the install wizard for Wild Metal Country re-release that was made for last xmas? It's pretty recent (the installer, not the game), but many SP2 users have problems with that.
To be fair, what do you mean when you mention that XP has compatibility? It has a great compatibility with software than came out yesterday? I bet. Show me an os that recently came out and doesn't have great compatibility with recent software made for it. How does including backwards compatibility cripple an os? Hell, even some stuff that came out in 2000-2001 is having trouble working with XP. Is that what you call a compatibility?

I didn't mention anything of the kind. I think you're confusing me with someone else. It does, but I didn't say it.



Fairly obviously, by forcing it to be much larger, bloated with additional functionality that hardly anyone is ever going to use and most users won't know how to disable even if it's possible.



Such as?

Indeed. Sorry about that. That was targeted at Steve Elliot.

In my opinion, that's exactly what XP is! It has stuff that pretty much no one uses and it's also huge...

At this very moment I only remember "Anachronox"... Yes, there's a patch for that, but still... Demo has trouble running. I will come up with more names - I just have to browse through my collection because so many things stopped working that I can't remember what works and what doesn't anymore!
Oh yeah, and DarkBasic classic programs have huge trouble too! ;-)

http://www.dosgamesarchive.com
Get started.

I don't need to get started believe me. I've started long time ago. I myself have quite a collection, but my problem is that some (significant part) of it doesn't work in XP and in DosBox... :-/

hmm, My pentium 2 400 runs significantly better in XP than it does in win98. My wife commented on it when I upgraded it. It does have 512mb of ram which helps, but its snappier all around, particularly in her apps, Office 2003 email and browsing the web etc. So long as you turn off some of the silly animated fade effects it may run as much as 20% faster.

Compatibility? I was referring to hardware driver problems - much more reliable system under XP.

Like Gabriel said if you want to run old software stick with 98.

Having mainly 32-bit computers available but having backward compatibility with 16-bit software will only add to size of the Operating System, a reduction in speed because it has to be more complicated and increase the chances of crashes - because the systems are so different.

I used 98 until around 2003, it wasn't very auto-compatible with new stuff like XP. But even XP still needs driver disks. There was this one annoying bug for 98 where Explorer would lock for around a minute when deleting a folder with lots of files in it. Microsoft acknowleged it but never fixed it!

I don't "get" it why people still use 98. Move with the times people! :)

Sadly that is what sells computers to the general mass of idiots out there surfing for porn and forwarding pointless (and virus laden) emails!!!

Remember... Mac is "friendlier" then windows...

Oh how many times I heard that... just because your computer "smiles" at you when you turn it on doesn't keep it from being a piece of crap.

Likewise Bloatdoze... err wwindows... never really designed to do what it does. Win 200 and XP Pro were allegedly designed for IT Teams to maintain and massage. Not evil student geniuses to attempt taking over the world.

What if I want to run both? On the same machine! That's to the news that soon we will be needing Vista to play latest games...

And I want a hoverbike. WHY WONT M$ GIVE ME A HOVERBIKE???

I don't get this guys, what's so wrong with backwards compatibility? Was Win95/98 somehow worse than it could be by allowing you to restart in DOS?

I still wish XP booted to DOS and you had to type XP to get it to load or put it in autoexec.bat but I'm old skool so...

> Was Win95/98 somehow worse than it could be by allowing you to restart in DOS?

Yes. It could have been much smaller, faster, and more secure if it were not. *BUT* that was outweighed by the ability to keep running almost all the old programs.

We've already answered that several times - basically the Operating system is less efficient if it has to be able to run every single program ever written for the PC over the last 25 years.

Anyway this thread wasn't about XP - it was about Vista taking things to the extreme in the hardware requirements when it can't be justified - that I object too.

I think we need to wait and see. I'm not sure that hardware specs need be that high to run Vista in a similar fallback to XP. It's only if you want all the eye candy and 3D desktop with shaders that you need a fancy video card.

It is recommended to wait for a DX10 video card if you want to play the next gen of windows games. In some cases DX10 is claimed to be up to 6x faster than current DX9 tech.

If most people turn back to the XP-style then what a waste of development time, resources and harddisk space!

DX10 added to XP seems a much better idea - make it more efficient not bigger.

I run XP in "Classic mode" i.e. Win2K look.

I don't run in classic mode - but turned off those silly fade effects and animations to make things 'snappier'.

If you had actualy used Java you would have known that it's recieved quite a few performance boosts in it's lifetime (First in version 1.3, then in version 1.5). Running the same Java code, compiled by Java 1.5 and 1.2 the 1.5 version will be running circles around the 1.2 version.

Until they where 'aquired' by Microsoft, Bungie was primarilly a Mac developer. Sure a PC version was planned (like with Marathon) but was never demonstrated. Went right from Mac to XBox.

As soon as Vista comes out I'm buying it. I personally won't code anything(Don't code anything anyway) that will be compatible with Windows Dinasaur Edition. You either go with the techno flow or dicipate into the unknown.


Also, What you all fail to realise is that Micro$oft own you and they can do whatever they want.

Now, there's probably many spelling and gramatical mistakes in this post but only because I'm typing at 142 thousand words a second.

All I can say is that Halo 2 had better have graphics that warrant the Vista only release. If it looks like the Xbox version I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Halo 2 only looks marginaly better than Halo 1. BTW anyone tried the xbox version on the 360?

GameSpot had an article about that, along with other games, cant find it at the moment (spent 15min searchin that damn site with no luck), but the only differences I saw was that the lighting was a bit cleaner, and that all the textures were smoother looking, due in part to anisotrophic filtering, and anti-aliasing.

The biggest problem with 95/98 is that much of the hardware is accessed directly, which gives a lot more potential for instability.

WinNT/2000/XP virtualizes pretty much all the hardware access, which is one of the main reasons for the added stability. Under Win95 a poorly written application could mess with some of your hardware devices directly, and kick the feet out from under the entire OS. under the newer editions, that won't happen anymore, hence the increased stability/reliability.