The big thing about Windows Vista is that the brand is wanting to reestablish itself by making the system a good game platform and making sure that everyone knows about that fact.

Windows Vista will ship with both Direct X 10 and Direct X 9, which is a first for a Microsoft operating system. From the get go you can get gaming with the Game Explorer (which acts a lot like Windows Media Player in regards to the information that displays), and you can see all sorts of information that attaches to that game you are currently playing.

Windows Vista has also added a 3D version of chess to the mix as well as making sure all the older games (Minesweeper, Solitaire, Hearts, etc) look updated for the new system. Scalability was added to this OS so that it will always fit the screen you are running it on. We were told of a “Big Bertha” screen where older Windows apparently appear as a little blip on that radar somewhere on the screen.

Vista will also start brandishing that name like they do on the Xbox merchandise, as PC gaming can be a fickle title and they want the consumer to know that “Yes, this is a Windows Vista game.” Such games set to be included are Flight Simulator X, Hellgate London, Alan Wake, Shadowrun, Halo 2, and Age of Conan just to name a few. Our speaker also made note that Namco was supporting the platform, which is something that company rarely does. They even showed some various footage of different games and Crysis looked amazing.

The one thing that impressed me most was its family features and settings, which means that parents are able to access content their child has been to and control it to a degree like never before. For one thing you can log what your kids do, such as how many times they try to guess your password, how many times they run a program that shouldn’t, and how many times they go to a website they shouldn’t. There are also time settings so you can say, “Sorry little Johnny, you can only play for an hour a night…and I mean that.” You can also put up content blockers that stop your children from playing games with a certain rating you don’t approve of or even so far as to limit content descriptions such as games with alcohol use and/or sexual situations.

Overall Windows Vista is really nice feature wise and looks to be a good go to for parents who want to control what their little ones are doing on these advanced tech machines called computers.