Electronic Arts, Sega and NHN Games confirm in a joint statement with chipmaker AMD and software/console giant Microsoft that their studios will back Microsoft's DirectX 10.1 API for upcoming game development. The first few titles will include Sega's RTS Stormrise, EA and Phenomic Studio's fantasy online RTS Battleforge, and NHN Games' RPG Cloud 9.

Requirements for DirectX 10 and its incremental updates are currently limited to the Windows Vista OS starting with Service Pack 1, and graphics cards supporting Shader Model 4.1. As you can see, the market for DirectX 10 support in gaming is not yet geared towards them casual types. Assassin's Creed was originally expected to be one of the first titles actually supporting DirectX 10.1, but later software patches removed any trace of this.  The slightly older DirectX 10 API however is backed by current headline titles like Age of Conan and Crysis, as well as upcoming titles like StarCraft II and Dragon Age: Origins.

Games for Windows' global director Kevin Unangst brings the AMD/ATI lovin' in the official statement, though to be fair only the chipmaker's Radeon HD 3000 and HD 4800 series of graphics card fully support the updated API at time of writing.  For now, gamers are still finding it hard to discern differences in DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 gaming.  The leap from DirectX 10 to DirectX 10.1 will be even harder to appreciate, as the update largely involves memory optimizations.