It's not exactly a shock, but an AMD rep recently stated that DirectX 12, the next version of Microsoft's graphics API for Windows, won't be made available for Windows 7. Microsoft has already announced that DirectX 12 will launch alongside Windows 10 sometime in 2015.
The news came from AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy at a presentation during the recent PDXLAN gaming event. As he stated, "One thing that's not going to happen to it is DX12. Yup, DX12 is not coming to Windows 7." This isn't surprising, since Windows 7 mainstream support is scheduled to end in January 2015, which means that new features won't be added to the OS after that date (it will continue to receive security and bug updates for several more years).
Microsoft has so far only confirmed that DirectX 12 will be added as part of Windows 10 out of the box and it's also due for Windows 8 and 8.1 as well. DirectX 12 will also be made available as a software update for Xbox One game developers. Should Microsoft go ahead and add DirectX 12 for Windows 7 as well?
Source: PC Gamer
