Penetration of DirectX 10 hardware and Windows Vista is pretty high nowadays, but gamer reception to it has not been entirely positive. Keeping that in mind, Creative Assembly’s upcoming RTS Stormrise will be one of the first PC games to require both a DX10-capable video card and Windows Vista.

"Stormrise has been designed for DirectX 10 and Vista only right from the start," said Stormrise lead designer Artem Kulakov, who added: "Vista only. DX10 only. No fallback option. We have never suggested this or hinted at it, so it shouldn’t be a surprise."

Speaking of the move, he said that DX10 offers a lot of “advantages” over DX9 and that they have had fewer driver-specific compatibility issues.

Stormrise is a small-scale real-time strategy designed for consoles in mind. It is expected to hit stores on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 this month.