A patch has been made available from the hacking group Warez designed to enable gamers to run Windows Vista exclusive titles - Halo 2 and Shadowrun - on Windows XP. This despite that fact that Microsoft claimed in the past that the Vista-only titles could not be backported to support Windows XP due to the overhauled Vista graphics architecture. Initially, at the beginning of June, Falling Leaf Systems announced the debut of a project designed to offer Windows XP compatible Halo 2 and Shadowrun.

Bink.nu is reporting that the hacking group Warez has managed to move faster than Falling Leaf Systems and produced a patch allowing users to play both Halo 2 and Shadowrun on the good old Windows XP. The Vista exclusive games can now be played on XP via the DirectX 9 graphics engine. Falling Leaf Systems accused Microsoft of forcing users to migrate to the latest Windows platform, and of deceiving the gaming community by stating that DirectX 10 and Windows XP compatibility was impossible and then that the Vista titles could not run on DirectX 9.

The Warez group proved with their patch that Falling Leaf Systems was right in all claims. Market analyst forecasted that one of the major drives for Windows Vista adoption was going to take place in the gaming environment. The high rate of Vista take-up by gamers was indeed justified by the benefits inherent with the evolved DirectX 10, Vista's next generation gaming technology. One move that Microsoft made to clearly point gamers in the right direction was the release of Vista only games. The latest gaming titles became synonymous with the Windows Vista operating system.

Microsoft tried to dress up the new Windows Vista game embargo, but a forced migration remains a forced migration no matter the volume of details related to the evolution of the users' gaming experience. The demand for cross-platform games comes to prove that Microsoft's Vista exclusive gaming titles is a strategy that has only begun to backfire.