Age of Empires 3 demo released, requires Windows XP

You think that developers deciding to only support the better solution is a low tactic? Are you stilll upset that you cant play doom 3 on your windows 95 machine as well?

I don't think this was a developer decision. What possible reason is there for this to not run on Win2k? It's got all the drivers and practically the same code base (with less RAM usage) so really it looks like a Microsoft policy decision more than anything.

I installed last night and every time i tried to run, it crashed my computer. bsod, holmes! They need a demo patch...

Finally, there are some games that are move on for XP. No more old Windows. Ugh.

just DLed...
crashed everytime also

Actually, this could be a developer decision. Under the hood XP has a lot of newer API hooks and features that don't appear in any previous version of Windows. Having XP as a baseline avoids several hassles and helps reduced the testing burden, which saves a LOT of money from the ever expanding development budget.

How many people are really going to be negatively affected by this? A new PC of the required specs can be had for well under $1,000. Sub-3 GHz PCs are now bargain basement items. Fry's had a 128 MB Nvidia FX6200 advertised yesterday for $50. It won't be long before a machine of the minimum spec for this game no longer appears at retail and the cheapest machines are more than up to the task.

IF you cannot afford such a machine, why are you looking at new games? These are luxury items and the newest will be aimed at the affluent audience.

I DLed and played. I'm not all too impressed. graphics were slightly better than AOM but the actual game might be better. I might pass on this one.

epobirs you're missing the point, the common people do not upgrade their PCs everytime new hardware (or game requirements, for that matter), hence the perpetual surprise "why can't I run this game my wife/son/whatever gave me for Christmas?". Games that require the latest hardware do poorly anyway, just look at BF2: horrible sales because only "hardcore" games (an over-estimated *minority*!) have what it takes to make it shine.

The XP requirement is some insane smokin' bullpockey. 2000 is a better OS, has exactly the same Directx base, and doesn't have an insane, absurd license.

As for BF2 requiring XP: it doesn't. It installs in 2000... they just won't offer phone support for 2000. That makes sense. Shutting out users because you're pissed they didn't buy the lastest worthless iteration of your OS doesn't.

Windows XP came out in *2001*. It's getting close to 2006 now. They waited over four years to start using XP-specific features, yet still you complain?

Uh, dude, this isn't going to work on your Commodore 128 either.

How dare a company require you to use the latest version of their software! Those bastards! They are trying to make a profit off me! HOW DARE THEY MAKE PROFIT! Profit should be against the law, I'm tired of everyone making money off me.

Seriously, it's almost time for the next iteration of windows to come out, and this is the first game to require XP.

I wonder if all these whiners are the same ones that downplay the XBOX 360 and the PlayStation 3 as being "inferior" to PC gaming... Because if the vast majority of PC gamers are using 2.0GHz machines with a $50 GPU and 512MB of value RAM running Windows 98, then I think they will be pleasantly surprised with the graphics, performance and price of the next gen consoles... I'm aware that XP is a resource hog, however I still prefer it over 98SE, ME, and 2000 (well, XPpro anyway). Why? Well, because it's more stable than 98SE and ME and is more software/driver/hardware compatable than 2000. Seriously, 2000 is a good OS for business use, but I absolutely hate it for home/gaming use. And for the most part, 2000 is mainly used in the office anyway, most home users either have 98SE or XP on their machines while a FEW were preloaded with Windows ME. As someone else pointed out, XP is now 4 years old and Vista is on the horizon, therefore I don't see any problems with ANY developer requiring a SEMI-up-to-date OS. I don't expect to be able to play a Nintendo Revolution game on my SNES- just the other way around...

I don't get why someone who has a computer that can handle this game would be running Win2k. Gamers generally have cutting edge computers and putting such an old OS on it seems incredibly stupid.

Most new games have even higher recommended specs.

F.E.A.R:
3.0ghz P4/2500+ Athlon64
5gb hd space
1gig RAM
256meg 9800 Pro or better

#13,

I'm going to building a PC soon, and It's going to easily pass those specs, but...It's going to be using a 2.8ghz FX-57...Are you telling me that the best gaming processor isn't going to easily beat that? =|

(Sorry, I'm not too smart when it comes to these things. =)

It's only a matter of time before more and more companies follow suit. How many games on the market allow you to play through Dos?

Apparently there is a workaround:

http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=1,23485,0,10

That forum also has people reporting successfully running the demo on seriously underspecced PCs (GF2 MX, anyone?).

I've heard that you can install the demo on an XP machine and then just copy over the folder to a 2000 machine and it'll work fine. To be honest I don't see why this is such a shock, there have been programs that require 2000/XP for a while now and it was only a matter of time before 2000 got dropped off there too. Also, as someone already said, XP came out in 2001, if you're serious about gaming you really should have upgraded by now.

Some of us would prefer to not use an OS that requires you to agree to a draconian license in order to use it. That's why people would prefer to use Windows 2000. And why I still use Windows 98SE for gaming. And why I run Gnu/Linux as my main OS anyway.

Well, then, some of you will not be playing Age of Empires III it seems.

I've got a XP system with 1GB RAM and a NVIDIA 6800 and it looks great. For those who whine that it's only a little better than AOM, you probably don't have the high quality shaders turned on. That's what makes it sparkle. It really does look quite nice.

the game seemed pretty nice until I tried to actually play it. The map had a black screen covering the it, kind of like a permanent fog of war. I had no success fixing the problem.

>F.E.A.R:
>3.0ghz P4/2500+ Athlon64
>5gb hd space
>1gig RAM
>256meg 9800 Pro or better

so what? i meet those specs but i don't have winxp and i dont see any reason why i should upgrade. the only reason why they demand it is a political, not a technical one.

saying you need xp instead of 2k is like saying windows doesn't work without internet explorer (which i dont have installed either), it's just ridiculous and everybody with a bit of sw-knowledge knows that.

so for those who like the teletubbyland optics of xp and have no problem wasting system resources on that bloatware feel free to play the demo and talk about this game on the school yard. those who honor the freedom of choice more than they want to impress others might just wait for the cracked version that will offer an installer for win2k as well. no doubt about that.

and if this M$-experiment works it might be a good method to force the usage of longhorn in the future. some people could deny the installation of an os that enforces drm and copy protection, so why not write a game around it that wont run otherwise?

maybe hl3, steam and M$-drm, together at last.

btw: start the installer with aoe3trial.exe /a and select the target dir. it works on w2k without problems, no xp-box for installation needed.

If AoE 3 really needed XP to fuction, that's one thing, but the actual game will also run on windows 2000. Therefore i think it is nonsense for MS to say you need XP for the demo..

For the people that say "what moron would use 2000 on this or that PC":
I built my own PC about 1.5 years ago, P4 2.4c 1gig of corsair RAM (2-3-2-5 timings) sapphire radeon 9800pro 128mb and a 74Gb Raptor. When i was looking for a nice OS, i chose windows 2000, because all of the *extra* options in XP weren't for me (and at that time XP really had a lot of bugs and security holes in it, still does actually)

So why are people that obviously have a lower IQ than a piece of lemon pie calling other people stupid to use windows 2000?

what do you mean? "XP is so many years old" i mean, who cares, if i want to run a game, i want to be able to run it, and to compare windows 2000 to a commodore is like saying "what do you mean you cant calculate this or that, Einstein did it so many years ago!"

now, let's see what that Windows 2000 - Age of Empires III thread has to say..

I don't like MS trying to force me to upgrade, Win2k is more than capable of running any game, and I just hate XP's mushy and colorful look , let alone that it thinks I'm stupid as it guesses and tries to do everything for me, of course half the time it fails.

Won't run at all ... crashes every time and this is on a $10000 (no exaggeration) computer. Everything in this bad boy is top of the line. Also tried it on a top of the line lap top that also meet specifications...no luck.

What is this... Use XP or go away? Xp is for users whom need to be told where the ENTER key is located.
pardon me but almost every single Reconised Computer Expert will say that Win2K is the only even Half finished OS that MS has ever made. so comparing A 2k box with a commodor is like shooting your self in the foot. if you need something to tell you where to finde your Enter key (and tells you the wrong place any ways) buy XP if you dont need that Buy Win2k if you got a little balls buy/download a Linux distro

K thanks

(paradon my english since it is not my native)

microsoft is a fking joke. i refuse to install winxp cus the os really suck in many ways compared to win2kpro. but hey! i want to play aoe3, can i? NOOOOO, i must haev teh winxp to be able to play the game, for no good reason at all. screw ms!

sticking to win2k with or without aoe3.

You can run it under Win2K, but you have to install it on XP then copy the installed files over to the 2K machine. You can do what I did and extract the cab files and manually copy the files into the appropriate folders. It runs flawlessly.

That's bullshit that they limit this to XP+

If you look at the release dates for Win2k and XP it's only a year or so difference, I don't understand the loss of 2K support this year (2005)...if they are going to stick to this trend, XP should be losing support soon.

Windows XP Professional Edition — Release Date: 10/25/2001
Windows 2000 Professional Edit. — Release Date: 02/17/2000

WinXP supporters, I understand your stand about newer and more updated OS. There are certainly some hardwares that WinXP can fully utilise like the HyperThreading technology.

BUT.. bear in mind, Windows2000 and WindowsXP is not created based on the same technology, being XP based on 9x and 2k on NT technology.

Without doubt, Windows2000 runs more stable than WindowsXP. No "noobish" reminders for you to turn this on or send this send that. No kernel resource wasting/hogging unknown processes to slow your box down. No sudden "fanciful" bubbles to do this and that.

The minimium requirements for AoE3 became the ONLY requirement to play. So what if you're having AMD 57 CPU and Nvidia 7800GTX gfx card with 2GB RAM? Read AoE3's "basic requirements".

WindowsXP or later OS nearly made me laugh my balls out. Longhorn isn't officially out. WindowsXP 64bit IS STILL WindowsXP. What's the other "latest OS" on AoE3 official date of release?

For your info based on my personal experiences with the 2 OS, Windows2000 r0x for gaming. Win2k provides no lag, no crushes, no hang and through my 5 years of using Win2k, never a "blue screen of death" compared to 10+ times of BSoD and uncountable hangs and crushes on the same computer with my brother's copy of WinXP pro.

M$, you made the greatest mistake of "the right arm is an arm but the left arm is not". Period.

why they made it first for ms????? AND NOT FOR MAC!!!!!!!! tell me plzzzzz and tell me plzz when it will comes to mac.

All but one person I know that has a clue about computers (can build one from scratch and fix problems themselves instead of calling tech support) prefer Win2k over XP. The one that uses XP uses it for the built in video editing.

The reason most technical people use win2k is because it has proven to be the most reliable OS M$ has ever made to date. The only reason I've ever had to reboot in the past 4+ years is to install security patches and software/hardware upgrades and some defective RAM.

Problems I experienced in XP that I didn't like when I tried it:
1) Shortcuts on the hidden portion of Quick that pointed to network shares did not work for about 1yr and MS never created a KB article when I and others contacted them.

2) Huge install footprint, requires over 3x the HDD space of 2k

3) Resource wasting graphics.

4) Time wasting animated assisants and dumbed down search options.

5) Search feature would not search inside code tags for text without some fairly hidden options (hidden in the indexing options even though indexing can be on or off to have the problem).

6) Roughly 48mb more RAM used at boot up.

7) They promote the better driver support but all OS's get out of date and I lost lots of HDD space for hardware I'll never own... You're going to purchase hardware that XP doesn't have built in drivers for when you buy new hardware so what's the point. The only good thing related to drivers I've seen in xp is the better standard VGA driver allowing 800x600 (and 256 color?) if it doesn't have a built in driver.


Whether or not there were any technical reason that a game could not support 2k but work on XP it's only due to the fact that Microsoft is greedy and quit providing improvements of the OS when it 20 months old because XP came out. Not because none the improvements made to XP couldn't have worked on 2k, but because they have been trying to make 2k users give them more money ever since XP hit the shelves.

Anyhow after we all upgrade to Vista, and game support for it is dropped when the next version after it comes out, maybe we can argue on the same side.

When i play campaing it works for about 3 minutes then the sound crashes and then the rest of the game crashes... if anyone has a sollustion please mail me!!

christofferkangas@hotmail.com

What a bugger!

I bought the collectors edition, and couldn't wait installing it today. Then the message came.. I searched on the internet and came here.

I bought the game on first site, simply because AOE 1 & 2 worked also on 2k. I hope there will be a way to play it, at the moment I am very disapointed though. Win2K is such a great system - Im sure it's just microsoft policty.

So... it runs on my win 2k:)
Not so hard too do it...
Just run it from comand line with option /a
So just go start->run and E:setup.exe /a
If E is your DVD:)

I need to get 1 dll file d3dx9_25.dll and put it in folder with game.

And instal msxm 4.0 dont kwno what it is but game need it... so it works:)

On my old pc atholn 2500+ 1024mb ram and gf2mx400 32Mb runs with some graphcic gliches but i can play:) I am in mision 4 now:)

PS.I live in Poland no tech support from M$ here... to run this game it took me abut 15 minuts googling...

I found the way to install AOE3 on Win 2000:

http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/JeuxVideo/Age-Of-Empires-Coupe-France-install-windows-2000-possible-sujet-92307-1.htm

actually, w2k is more stable than xp, sorry. Anyways, all xp is, is a colorfull version of 2k. They added very little performance wise, infact, this computer is a 2k, and can still outperform that of most of the people i know.