Vista-only PC Games Cracked to Run Under XP

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June 27th, 2007 posted by Artis Oracle in PC

Microsoft has been a bit shaky in its decision to further gaming on the PC. The company wants games to remain strong in the gaming department, but at the same time, they are failing to realize that there are those who do not want to change their OS to play certain games. The cracking group Razor 1911 has fought back against Microsoft’s Vista-only policy by releasing cracks for games such as Halo 2 and Shadowrun allowing them to run under Windows XP.

However, the cracks are not 100% effective. The patch notes that came with the crack for Shadowrun state that the crack only allows for single-player bot matches and LAN-multiplayer. Because the game is validated over Windows LIVE, it would not be hard to understand that online multiplayer is out of the question.

These patches exist because there is obviously a rift developing in the game market between consumers and Microsoft. Gamers are not adopting Vista as Microsoft has planned. Microsoft continues to use the argument that backporting DirectX 10 to XP would be challenging, but neither Shadowrun nor Halo 2 use the DirectX 10. The only reason these games are Vista-exclusives is because Microsoft is trying to get widespread adoption of Vista, which so far is moving at a very slow pace. We are still a while out from games really requiring DirectX 10 and a DirectX 10-compatible video graphics card.