I'm afraid it will be for longer than you'd expect. You see, it took developers less than a year to find valid and noticeable improvements going from DX8.1 to DX9. We're still not even close to impressive differences worth switching over to DX10 here...
You do know that the main advantage of DX10 is not better graphics, but reduced driver overhead compared to DX9. Meaning that DX10 can do effects with a single pass/less work for the system compared to DX9. Reducing CPU usage however is not going to change performance much for gaming which is GPU/Video card limited:)
Microsoft's own Flight Simulator X which was to be a the "showcase of DX10" turned out not to look as expected/promised (not even close); visually not stunning or particularly better compared to a DX9 version; and its runs like a dog on anything but the most powerful systems.
I don't look forward to DX10 only titles; Microsoft was set to push some to be DX10 only to help sell Vista; but that didn't really turn out as expected, DX9 will stay around for quite a some time; 75% of the PCs out there still run DX9/XP. Unlike the 98>2000 or 2000>XP conversion, there is no real incentive for end users to use Vista over XP.
This leaves the gaming market with XP/Vista (75/20% currently) and if you want to sell your game and make it a success, you might want to consider going with the biggest user base: DX9.
Then add the fact that the XBOX 360 can't handle DX10 (it's somewhere between DX9 and DX10) and every multi-platform game is bound to developed to look good on DX9/XBOX360 with maybe a bit of fluff for DX10.
so "for now" may turn out a bit longer than you think;) |