In case anyone thought generally lower frame rates and appalling openGL support (through a DirectX wrapper) weren't enough reason to avoid Windows Vista gaming at all costs, news emerges that 2 of the new crop of 'vista only' games have been hacked to run on XP just fine.
Microsoft trying to force people to upgrade when they in no way need to? Shocking
The 2 games in question are Halo 2 and Shadowrun, both DX9 games that Microsoft has simply chosen to not allow run on XP.
According to next-gen.biz, Hacking/Cracking group 'warez' has beaten falling leaf systems, who previously called Microsoft out for these tactics, to the punch with allowing users running XP to run these games.
The multiplayer 'live' network remains Vista only at this point however.
It would be trivial for Microsoft to have these games running perfectly if they wanted them to do so and I for one strongly disagree with Microsoft's tactics of trying to force users to upgrade by not bringing DX10 to XP as well as just blocking some DX9 games from running.