[JediBaron]

We need to let 3DO know that people do play games on Win2k. Please e-mail them with a message saying that there are gamers out there with Win2K.
Thanks all

CS-Chris
3DO Customer Support
Phone: 650.261-3454
Email: customer-support@3do.com
Web: http://www.3do.com/support

3DO has emailed me and specifically said that they don't think that Win2k is a viable gaming platform. They therefor refuse to patch any of their games to work correctly in Win2k. I've attached the qoute that they gave me below.
Dear Tony,

At this point in time, we have no plans to make Might and Magic VII compatible with Windows2000. Windows2000 is not really intended for gaming purposes, as this quote from Microsoft's site would attest to:

Adapting our older software to function on Windows2000 would take resources that are right now devoted to making the next generation of games. I apologize for any inconvenience, and I hope you can understand our dilemma.


[This message has been edited by JediBaron (edited 11 April 2000).]

[sandvic]

Get yourself Windows ME, Win2K is not meant for gaming and it won't get any gaming related updates. Just enjoy the games that work with the current patches. I'm using Win2K because of performance and stability reasons and all the games I'm playing perform beautifully but for those that won't work I'll stick to Win98/Me

[Ballplayer]

3DO is going to have windows 2000 support for High Heat 2001 in an upcoming patch. Contrary to what you say, the developers of that game have worked very hard to find a solution for the problem.

[BladeRunner]

Give it time, it will happen.
Who remembers all the fun we had trying to get games, some as young as six months old, working Under Windows95 when it first came out.
OK, so a lot of these games were never patched, but the companies soon made all their future releases compatible.
The only thing that stopped developers developing for Win2k was DirectX support.
Now Win2k has it, the majority of game producers are going to realise the merits of making their games win2k compatible.
MS can say until their blue in the face 'This is a business platform.....'
However this is falling on deaf ears as both the next home user Windows (after ME) and the X-Box are based on Windows 2000.

[sandvic]

I agree with you, people were so keen about a NEW Windows with the stability of NT + the gaming suport of Windows 9X that they jumped to Win2K without thinking about it twice but if companies will focus on developing drivers for Windows ME (which is FAST!)and there won't be DirectX 8 for Win2K, gamers will forget about Win2K soon. In fact, many ppl have Win2K just 'because WinME isn't out yet' so it's not worth for the game companies developing compatibility patches for Win2K. Most new (and not so new) games such as Q3, Ultima IX, Thief 2 and others run smoothly on Win2K (some of them perform even better than on Win98) so let's stick to them and wait for WinMe for full compatibility.

[Dragon-Lord]

DirectX 8 only for win98/se/me? Why would MS go through all this work to get directx 7 fully in sync across both platforms not to keep it upgraded from now on? Anyone know for sure whether this is the case? I would like to dump my WIndows 98 dual boot, but won't if this is true. I am very happy with the few games I play under W2k. It blows w98 away.

:}

[simonroockley]

I doubt that microsoft are going to stop development of DX for 2000, especially as this is going to be their Flagship OS in the future especially with Xbox being Win2000 based. Any development done for it between now and it's release date will have to done on the latest version of DX so that the new games will take advantage of all the features that are added in with each version of directX.

[SHS]

Sorry to sandvic but there will be DirectX 8 for Windows2000 I know I'am DX8 tester.

[r0cko]

when is Dx8 coming out and is it better faster ? or just faster with Dx8 games? im running win2k pro build 2195 now and it rocks all my games work great except my force feedback logitech sterring wheel.

[This message has been edited by r0cko (edited 12 April 2000).]

[Damien Green]

DirectX 8 will definately be avalible for Win 2000 - Micrsoft is now (with the exception of Windows Millenium) following a path that will see all it's future operating systems based on the NT kernal. DX 3on NT4 was never much more than a hacked version of Win 95's DX3 at the best of times. DX7 under Win 2000 supports pretty much everything that DX7 on Win 98 does. It's only sloppy programming on the software companies part that can cause certain applications and games to fail under Windows 2000.

[Dragon-Lord]

thank you all for reinforcing my faith in migrating completely to W2K. Man does not live by work alone...

:}

[Galilee]

I really think win2k will be a good gaming platform. Because of the solid DirectX supprt and the fact that with enough RAM its faster than win98 Its my choise not only for stability but for gaming.
Most games and developers will be forced to make their games compatible with win2k, and there is really no reason not to. NT's problem was the lack of DirectX and just the same a lot of Games had NT support. Atleast a lot of mine. And considering win2k is much more game-friendly than NT i think they will support it.
It seems like a lot of develoers dont understand that many people use win2k. for example Creative, Miro and HP. They are on some product extreamly slow in realeasing drivers. I dont know why but I think they will be punished by the users if they dont improove. I really hope users will stop buying products that are not supported.

[ledzeppel]

In My Opinion, I believe Windows ME will eventually BECOME (a few months after it is released) Windows for Dumb People.

Let's face it Windows 2000 is the OS of the future and MS knows it's much better (but didn't know the popularity it would acquire!)platform and they'll have to eventually market ME as an OS for the less experienced, so they don't lose ALL their sells to Win2k.

[DosFreak]

ME is for "ignorant" people. I was going to bring in some screenshots to prove my point but I forgot. Sufice it to say that if you like to do anything technical with your computer stay away from ME! hehehehe

[JediBaron]

Thanks for all the great replies guys.
I understand that Microsoft is going to be releasing ME, but I doubt that I will switch from my Win2k. My personal belief is that this 'no games are supposed to work with Win2k' approach is a bunch of garbage. That's exactly what people said about Win95 when it came out. Some companies then, like 3DO now, continued to make progs for DOS, saying stuff like 'Win95 isn't fast enough' or 'This prog can't run good with multitasking', etc. The good news is that they figured out how many benifits there was to using Win95's features, and POOF! no new DOS games were under development within a year of Win95's release.
I personally agree quite strongly with Damien Green who said that it's really just sloppy programming that keeps games from working.
Also, this thing with slow release of drivers is utter stupidity. All the major companies must have had the final driver roadmap for Win2k and a solid developer beta well over a year before the release of Win2k. What? Did they just think it was never going to come out? No, I know, one day MS called up Creative and said, 'hey guys, we just now made a new operating system called Win2k.' And Creative said, 'oh my God! Why didn't anyone tell us? Now we have to scramble to make drivers and all our customers have to suffer! OH NO!'
Yep, that's it. Or at least what many a manufacturer would like you to think.

Keep up the good posts!

[RoGuE]

who is this sandvic charater? i build gaming systems for a living and i use win2k as my gaming platform....its awesome and i dont get any call backs because of games crashing like they did in winblows 98, the biggest complaint from my customers was that they were tired of having to reboot every 10 minutes. also, most gamers like to run game servers if they are on high bandwidth connections. win2k is ,oh, so much better when it comes to networking....ive built a few systems that run q3 servers as a system service and the stabality is excellent...so, as far as win2k not being a good gaming platform, thats bunk. also as far as gaming companies not supporting win2k in future, that is also bunk, huge game developers like id software saw the future and concentrated on the nt kernel.....so if yer gaming and yer using win2k YOU are the future.

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[Face Dancer]

Win2k is a stable OS for professional use.

Programming is a profession!

Anyone who says that win2k is not a platform for gaming should be shot.

[JediBaron]

All right, now that's what I'm talking about
Please help me email 3DO into submission as per the original post
Thanks, guys

[Ballplayer]

Since there is at least one part of 3do hard at work for win2k compatibility, it's not fair to blame the entire company. Find a more specific person such as a developer and you will have much better luck.

[pmistry]

Microsoft has even said themselves that Windows 2000 will support ALL future releases of DirectX so DirectX 8 is in for sure. Windows 2000 is a great gaming platform because of superior file I/O performance, and rock solid stability. I've been testing a lot of games with it. Those games that supported NT4 run without a hitch on Win2k. Some stupid EA games like NFS3 and NFS4 refuse to load because of stupid OS checks, which is just flat out ignorance on EA's part. As for Windows ME, I've been working with a beta copy and I really have to say that this release of Windows will not be much better than Win98 and power gamers will have little reason to upgrade to it. It is VERY unlikely that future games will only support WinME. Even today all games support Windows 95 and Windows 98, there are no Win98 only games. With the large user base that Win95/98 share, game developers cannot just focus on WinME. Furthermore, with Win2k popularity increasing, game developers will make all future games compatible with it, after all EA did make Porsche Unleashed compatible with Win2k.

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