Heise Online reports that Gabe Newell, president of Valve Software, said in an interview that Microsoft made a terrible mistake releasing DirectX 10 for Vista only and excluding Windows XP.

"He said this decision affected the whole industry as so far only a very small percentage of players can use DirectX 10.

When developing cross-platform games which are also released fo Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, developers look for the smallest common denominator. And since neither Microsoft's nor Sony's new consoles support Shader Model 4.0 for DirectX 10, only few games use it, he said."

>> Gabe Newell: DirectX 10 for Vista was a mistake