Help me wrap my head around this.
At the beginning of Vista MS introduced directx 10. This was supposed to move operating system sales, and be a feature integral to new games.
At the beginning of 7 MS said they'd introduce directx 11. Almost none of the newest games had feature support for directx 10, and those that did had them almost universally hidden because the consumer base had given Vista the finger.
Now people bought into 7, because it was a genuine improvement over xp. There were quibbles, but a functional 64 bit variant, better performance, and a smaller footprint had 7 beating out xp in almost every metric.
Windows 8 was introduced, with a ham-fisted attempt to unify the windows experience. People couldn't, and still can't, look past the UI for the incremental improvements. Rather than addressing the issue, MS gives people back a feature from the old UI without regards for what is actually being asked. People offer the same finger back to MS, that it offered them.
Knowing that OS sales are stagnating, MS introduces a new variant of directx just like the one packaged with Vista. They think that this time it will work, because their console will have it. Of course, the directx variant hasn't yet been released. This means that launch titles will not be able to use it, and the as yet unreleased OS won't see anything that uses it for a solid year.
So we have one of two situations here; MS hasn't talked to itself internally or they are raging idiots. The first conclusion is valid if the xbox arm hasn't been kept in the loop with the OS arm. If the struggles of the OS haven't been made clear, a person at the top could dictate the (for the sake of the Windows experience) inclusion of a new directx variant in the console to match the new OS.
This would be logical, assuming three things weren't true. MS has gone with slower RAM than Sony, so sharing that pool seems like a desperate effort to make it work better based on the aging directx standard. MS is giving away free upgrades to 8 users, basically saying that 8.1 is not bringing enough value to users to justify the cost of a new OS. Finally, the MS track record speaks volumes. They don't listen to customer feedback, crush dissenting views rather than understanding and addressing them, and developers are the ones being put in a tight place here. Who would spend valuable resources coding for 11.2 when the features can't be ported to another console, and only a small percentage of PC users might see the benefits? My money is on MS drawing a line in the sand, and telling the sea of change that they'll stab it if it crosses the line. In short, MS is being stupid.
