As some of you may have already heard the minimum system specs for Just Cause 2 were recently announced.
  
I'll spare you the details, key here are first and fifth bullet points
  - Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
 -  DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10 
 
Bummer for me, I was actually swayed by the trailers and planning on buying it. So heads up for other people who were planning on buying it.
Edit: I was initially planning to write quite a substantial rant but deiced it came of as too whiny and I'm not a whiner :)

It's kind of confusing but I believe Microsoft is ending "Mainstream Support" for Windows XP on April 21, 2010. 
 
This may effect software developers even more so than it does for consumers.  If a developer can't get support from Microsoft on a certain OS, then it just makes that more difficult for them to support it themselves.  
 
I guess it's finally time for everyone to upgrade to Windows 7? 

While this is rather annoying for people who are still using Windows XP there does need to be a point where you cut it off and run with the current version of Windows and the next version of DirectX. Thankfully only a few games required Vista since that isnt a good version of Windows but Windows 7 actually works so expecting that isnt actually all that terrible and modern cards have been running DirectX10 for a while, even my Laptop's integrated chipset runs Windows 7 (not that it could run Just Cause 2).

It makes sense from Microsoft's view, it's just like a new games console.

Finally upgrading to windows 7 this weekend so I'm not bothered, its an awesome os.  XP did come out in 2001so I imagine the number of games that stop supporting it will increase pretty rapidly in the next year or so.
Its all for the best if you read up on the improvements between dx10-11 and the overall performance increases.
 
Here's a list of all the DX10 supported games for anyone interested.

" As some of you may have already heard the minimum system specs for Just Cause 2 were recently announced.    I'll spare you the details, key here are first and fifth bullet points   - Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)  -  DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10   Bummer for me, I was actually swayed by the trailers and planning on buying it. So heads up for other people who were planning on buying it.Edit: I was initially planning to write quite a substantial rant but deiced it came of as too whiny and I'm not a whiner :) "

" @Tennmuerti said:

" As some of you may have already heard the minimum system specs for Just Cause 2 were recently announced.    I'll spare you the details, key here are first and fifth bullet points   - Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)  -  DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10   Bummer for me, I was actually swayed by the trailers and planning on buying it. So heads up for other people who were planning on buying it.Edit: I was initially planning to write quite a substantial rant but deiced it came of as too whiny and I'm not a whiner :) "

Invest in windows 7. it's pretty awesome. "

I am planning to upgrade to windows 7 very soon ,but still 42% of steam users are still using xp. So,they should have kept the option to play it in xp. 

It's a darn shame, but in all honesty, i've needed to reformat for a while now, and i've been interested in W7 (Also been interested in JC2, so that's another bonus i guess).
 
It's time to slowly realize that XP is 9 years old, if MS (dunno if they had any hand in this or not) doesn't start migrating people over to 7, they'll have big problems soon. (then again, JC2 isn't exactly a big enough name to make that much difference)

I'm on 7 but I still think it's pretty silly they can put in the extra work to port it to the consoles (which certainly don't have DX10 capabilities) yet don't bother reducing a few shader effects here and there for the PC release to be playable on DX9. It can certainly cripple that version's sales potential.

What the FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC***************************
 
Ive stuck to XP for SO long... Finally time for a goodbye :'(

for all you guys out there that dont have anything past xp. get an OEM copy of 7 from newegg or something. its way cheaper than getting the os from a store or somewhere else. besides windows 7 is actually pretty good compared to vista. my personal computer is still xp but thats because this old rig cant handle playing anything more advanced than halflife 2. at least handle it well. but ive got  7 on three other rigs and it works great.
 
besides if your a big pc gamer it is going to get harder to find games made for xp now that windows is stopping regular support in a couple months. this is one of the few pitfalls of pc gaming. dated hardware and dated os.
 
you could always just jump on the console bandwagon with all of the Internets rejected souls and argue with twelve year olds about your mothers sexual preferences with said twelve year old

Nobody complained when Windows 2000/ME support was dropped ages ago. XP has been around a long time. The only annoying part is that this is most likely because they're foregoing Direct X 9 support (after all, we're on version 11 of Direct X now), when later Direct X versions could surely run on the XP kernel if MS wanted it to.

" I'm on 7 but I still think it's pretty silly they can put in the extra work to port it to the consoles (which certainly don't have DX10 capabilities) yet don't bother reducing a few shader effects here and there for the PC release to be playable on DX9. It can certainly cripple that version's sales potential. "

JUST GET WINDOWS 7 
 
it's sooooo good.

Well, no Just Cause 2 for me.

Like a lot of people I don't really want to upgrade the OS until I put together a new rig. It would be too much bother.
So far the only game that I cannot max out on my laptop is Crysis, pretty much everything else I still run at max setting at 1920/1200 so for me at least there's not enough pressure to upgrade yet. Also JC2 is pretty much the only real big release that I cared about that does not support DX9.
I totally agree from the tech perspective we need to start moving away from DX9 backwards compatibility. So it's all just a matter of there being enough incentive to upgrade for me, right now I don't really care enough about seeing playing Crysis in all it's glory since it's kind of a short shallow game outside of graphics. Metro 2033 is the only other title that I can think of atm that I'm interested in playing but would need to put together a new rig to do so at high settings. So still waiting for that dealbreaker.
 
Another issue I take with upgrading to Win7 is not it's performance (which I heard is ok) but the policies of Microsoft.
For example I completely skipped the Vista OS generation in terms of gaming and it blew over just like I predicted.
Now however there are news going round that MS is already planning for Win8 in the following year. See that seems kinda fast for me. It gives pause: ok so i'll upgrade to Win7 and DX11 but then say a new OS is released and MS does their old bullshit again and make DX12 only compatible with the new OS like they did twice already, that would be a bummer.

When I bought my new gaming rig about 4 months ago and was offered a great deal on windows 7 so I went for it. And now after 4 months I am absolutely loving it! Windows 7 isnt that bad. It is actually pretty good! There are a lot of easy too use functionalities which is the reason why I like it.

Unfortunately, I didn't read the small print and downloaded the 10GB demo.  There was a loud "FUCK".  
Anyways, there's more than 1 reason to upgrade off of Windows XP (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm) but like most people, I'll wait until my next rig upgrade before upgrading the OS.