EA's big upcoming first-person shooter, Battlefield 3, won't be able to run on the old Windows XP operating system, at least according to the rendering architect of Battlefield development studio DICE, Johan Andersson.
The DICE representative stated that the Frostbite 2 engine, on which Battlefield 3 would be based, had been primarily developed for the newer DirectX 11 system, supported by the Windows Vista and Windows 7 PC operating systems.
This means that Windows XP, which only supports DirectX 9, won't be able to run the new Battlefield 3, when it is eventually released.
This comes as a serious blow for gamers that were reluctant to upgrade to new operating systems, preferring to stick with XP, which didn't consume as many system resources as Vista or the newest 7 systems.
DICE was rumored to drop XP support for a while now, but the most recent Battlefield title, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, had support for the old PC operating system, although Vista and 7 were in the recommended system requirements.
Battlefield 3 is still in development at EA's DICE studio, and even though a concrete release date has yet to be revealed, the company is planning to ship the new first-person shooter around the end of the year, in order to rival Activision's all but confirmed Call of Duty title.
We already heard that the new Battlefield game wouldn't be targeted purely at consoles, and that the DICE team was working on making the PC edition as solid as possible, with certain aspects of the game tweaked for the platform.
Battlefield's popularity on the PC was confirmed when the players on that platform were the first to reach the 69 million team action milestone in the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam expansion, thus unlocking the Operation Hastings map.
There have been a few titles that didn't support Windows XP, but Battlefield 3 is by far the biggest as of yet.
Will it make you upgrade to a new operating system? Cast your thoughts below.
