Re - Power and Heat.
Isn't that almost always the case with new generations of harware however. Most especially in the graphics arena.
After all we went from graphics cards with no heatsinks to graphics cards with heatsinks to graphics cards with heatsinks and fans to graphics cards with dual slot coolers.
The power envelope required to run them in order to support new features has always resulted in an increase.
The 7800 GTX to 7900 GT isn't a new architecture and even then it's more an anomaly than a truism.
Sure there was no "need" for DX10 and it's additional transistor budget. However there was also no "need" for DX9, DX8, etc...
So, yes, we could stagnate the industry and say that from this point forward we no longer need innovation or new features, however, I personally like to see new features and what developers can do with it.
From what I can see the features of the current DX10 don't bring immediate bling bling to the game, however it appears to have been designed to allow you to do what you could in the past more efficiently, thus allowing more things to be done in the same given amount of time/whatever. Which, in theory, should lead to more improvements in visual quality at theoretically the same framerates.
In regards to why no DX10 titles yet and does this mean the industry is purposely holding back on DX10. I just don't see it yet. So far, it seems to be mirroring the deployment of DX9 and DX8 titles with regards to DX9 and DX8 hardware deployment.
I really don't see the adoption of Vista as a major roadblock. Especially considering that virtually all machines sold in the next year leading up to a greater inflection of DX10 titles will have Vista pre-installed.
Vista also does a few things, albeit clumsily at the moment, to try to inform the casual computer user of whether or not their computer is capapble of running a "Vista rated" game. Assuming MS doesn't abandon the idea, the new Vista performance rating is at least a step in a direction to allow casual users to find out what the Lowest performing part of their system is that might prevent them from running a game well or at least acceptably.
And going forward, Vista has the potential to be a much better gaming platform as it (from my limited experience on 3 machines, laptop, gaming, and 2 year old gaming) appears to use resources much better than XP did, with the benefit of being significantly more stable when gaming.
I think the perceived slowness in adoption is more a result of so many changes being introduced in a short period of time.
I don't think there's any fault to assign as it appears to just be a repeat of past DX introductions. Now if 2 years from now, there's still only a small handful of DX10 titles, then I'd be willing to investigate where and who should be to blame, but honestly, right now I just don't see it.
Regards,
SB