The Windows Game Explorer goes one step further by providing a control panel view of the installed Windows Vista games. At the first start of Windows Vista only the default games show up with big icons which makes identification easier. Microsoft added a few new games to Windows Vista and raised the design of them tremendously compared to previous operating systems. The biggest improvement over Windows XP however is the automatic addition of many games to the Windows Vista Game Explorer.

Not all games are compatible though. It’s fair to say that new games and popular old games are most likely compatible while lesser popular games are not. These can still be added but need to be moved to the Game Explorer by the user.

Several software developers have tried to port the functionality of the Vista Game Explorer to Windows XP to give XP users a similar experience. Users who are interested in playing Windows Vista Games on Windows XP can perform a Google search and will find ways to play them. It’s rather shady and I would not advise doing it unless you own Windows XP and Windows Vista. The search string Windows Vista Games should do the trick.

Microsoft made another decision that had lesser impact on Windows Vista sales than they hoped. DirectX 10 was made to run exclusively on Windows Vista. Windows XP gamers faced the decision to either stay on Windows XP and play the games with DirectX 9 or switch to Windows Vista to be able to play games in DirectX 10. The lack of high end video cards that were able to produce a constant playable framerate in DirectX 10 and the lack of games supporting that feature were probably the two biggest reasons why this strategy failed completely.

Microsoft lists only nine games on their DirectX 10 website. Good games but no critical mass to justify switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista just for gaming purposes.

There are not many exclusive Windows Vista games either which might make users change other than the newly created games that ship with the operating system and the games Halo2 and Shadowrun, both no prime examples of PC games though.

The Game Explorer will hopefully make its way into the next Microsoft operating system codenamed Windows 7. DirectX 10, or maybe 11 surely will and it remains to be seen if Windows Vista users will be left standing in the rain like the Windows XP users before.

The Vista Game Explorer Editor [link] is a program that aids you in changing the contents of those entries that show no boxart so that the overall display looks much better in the end. The process is a little bit complicated though but the end results justify it in my opinion. A wizard is run at first start that asks you several questions. One of them is which game you want to use to download the additional information with.

It is necessary to fake the game information for unsupported games using a supported game. Don’t worry, the supported game that you choose will not be deleted, it will reappear in the end.

Once we have selected a supported game we can begin to edit the unsupported ones. A click on the Load Game Information button opens the list of games and you can select one that you want to edit. You can edit both supported and unsupported games here. If an unsupported game has been chosen you will be asked if you want to fix that game.

Selecting yes will spawn the following process:

• The game will be deleted from the Windows Vista games menu
• a backup of the supported game that you have selected in the wizard will be created
• the supported game information will be overwritten with those of the unsupported game
• the backup of the supported game will be restored
• the information about the new supported game will be loaded in the editor

You still have to fill out the information by yourself but you can perform a web search from withing the Windows Vista Game Explorer Editor to find the boxart for that game. Click on Update Game Information when you are finished so that the new information can be written. Once that is done the game will appear as every other supported game in the Vista Game Explorer.

The difference is clearly visible.