Shane Kim Says No Alan Wake in 07. Hints at DX10 for XP

In an interview with GameInformer, Microsoft's Shane Kim has revealed that Alan Wake won't be coming out this year, thus shedding some light on why the game wasn't shown off at this year's E3. However, the interesting part of the interview has less to do with Alan Wake and more to do with the fact that DX10 might just be coming to XP.

Shane Kim: "The great thing about Alan Wake is that people responded really well to Alan Wake. We want to nurture that. It's not a 2007 title, which is why we're not showing it here. And we don't need to show it behind closed doors now. Enough said there."

Short and concise. That's how Kim likes his interview. But when the interviewer said "I'm all set [with a DX10 card], I'm just a little scared of Vista," Kim confidently replied saying "We will win your support on Vista." GI of course asked "How," and here's where things get interesting:

Shane Kim: "Because, at the end of the day, it's all about content to me. We're delivering the platform, Live is coming to Windows, DX10 is coming to Windows. At the end of the day, it's going to be about great content, that you go, "OK, for the stuff I want to play on Windows on my PC, OK, we did a good job." All of the stuff that we're doing for that is foundational stuff. The marketing efforts, the better merchandising in the stores and things like that. At the end of the day, it's going to be about the content. If we don't deliver that-I don't mean just Microsoft-but if the industry doesn't deliver that, then we're not going to win your hearts and minds, because all of these publishers that are out there, they want-they need-Windows to be a successful gaming platform."

As far as I know, DX10 is already tight with Vista, so if DX10 is "coming" to "Windows...", do you honestly think that Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Game Studios would forget that Vista has DX10 already...? Didn't think so. Then again, you could interpret this statement in more than just one way, but DX10 for XP is what we all like to believe, isn't it?