14 DAY TRIAL // Sex is a universal marketing tool. It will successfully sell games and it will prove equally capable to convert a potential Windows customer into a buyer. Of course that any game reference will not be complete without a connection to the world's most popular gaming platform, the Windows operating system. In the images included herein, courtesy of VR-Zone, you will be able to feast your eyes on the subtle marketing techniques deployed at this year's Games Convention Asia. Now, I haven't been able to find sufficient time in order to enjoy my favorite titles in quite some time, but since the weekend is upon us, I will indulge myself. This extravaganza of hot models can turn even simple Windows users and occasional Solitaire gamers into hardcore gaming addicts. So please don't blame me.
Still, there is something missing from the pictures taken at Games Convention Asia. And if you focus on the image included at the top of this article you will quickly understand why. The most visible monitor on the left had side features an all too familiar background. That of Windows XP, that's right! Now, Windows XP is present at the Games Convention Asia 2007 and Windows Vista is nowhere to be seen, even though Microsoft's latest operating system has been available for over seven months. What does this tell you about the adoption of Vista in the gaming community? The fact that Microsoft should have dropped the Wow altogether and gone with something more sexy? Perhaps, and that DirectX 10, the revolutionary graphics technology exclusive to Vista, might have been quite a short term erroneous strategy.
Now, with Windows Vista at 6% of the operating system market, game publishers and developers are experiencing difficulties in focusing on DirectX 10, as they would be addressing a niche no larger than that of Mac OS X. Both Gabe Newell, president of Valve Software and Igor Lobanchikov, a GSC graphics programmer, expressed deep discontent with Microsoft's decision to include DirectX 10 only in Vista and not backport it under any circumstances to Windows XP. In the meantime Microsoft is busy compiling rudimentary comparisons between DirectX 10 and DirectX 9.0b, that would fail to convince anybody to switch to Vista just for the graphics technology. Still, the company claims that 10 million Vista copies went to gamers out of all the 60 million shipped between January and June. That leaves approximately 200 million gamers still using Windows XP as their primary gaming platform. And to top it all off, in the first quarter of 2008, Microsoft will evolve DirectX 10 to DirectX 10.1 concomitantly with the availability of Windows Vista SP1.
