DirectX 12 will indeed be exclusive to Windows 10

Fable Legends coming to Xbox One and Windows 10
Fable Legends coming to Xbox One and Windows 10

A new report from Microsoft's Windows 10 press event today confirms that the upcoming DirectX 12 graphics API will only be for Windows 10 users. In other words, Windows 7 and 8 PC owners will have to take advantage of Microsoft's offer of a free upgrade to Windows 10 for one year to get the benefits of DirectX 12.

That's not all. According to Rock Paper Shotgun's report, Windows 10 PC owners will also have to get new graphics cards, currently unreleased, inside their rig in order to gain all of the features that will be included in DirectX 12, although a number of current graphics cards will still be able to use some of its improvements.

The Xbox One game streaming feature that was demoed today will also only work with game controllers on the PC side. In other words, gamers with just a keyboard and mouse won't be able to play games streamed from Microsoft's console. Finally, we can expect to see more Xbox One games that will be also support Windows 10 besides Fable Legends, which was also demoed today. Let's hope one of them is Halo 5: Guardians.

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun

John Callaham