Windows is like Star Trek - every second iteration sucks. They'll probably get it right with Windows 9.

Except those games are not 8-bit at all. They are merely using a retro aesthetic. The things going on under the hood are advanced far beyond anything the NES could have ever produced.

Seriously, technology keeps developing. That's not a conspiracy, that's simply how it works. Unless you keep up with the times, you end up with a computer that cannot run pretty much anything. Complaining that your single-core CPU cannot run virtually any game released in the last two years is like complaining that your horse doesn't go very fast even though you pour petrol into it.
This idiotic mantra is now my favourite example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

From the start of Win 8's life - Then DX 12 (and possibly 13) will be introduced making Win 7 obsolete.

And most people WILL be able to run games designed exclusively for Win 8 because most people don't know better and will have 8 on their systems at launch. *grins*
I had a friend that claimed this same thing but back then I thought Star Trek was just goofy nerd crap anyway......it wasn't until many years and psychiatrists later that I realized the sci-fi theme was masking deep metaphysical concepts.
I've considered that but I've also experienced how a re-compiled driver file can activate games like Borderlands claiming too powerful for my system.

The magic of optimisation.

Which, you could argue and I would mostly agree, is something of a lost art these days. Particularly indie studios often do not have the programming chops to pull that off (optimising is hard and requires pretty advanced skills compared to just making shit happen on the screen), so many low-budget games tend to run rather poorly even on relatively beefy hardware.

Well

1. Lack of optimization skills - but if you ever studied Blender most of the tutorials go through myriads of demonstrations as to how critical it is and the difference between implementing a model made from Sculptris or one that has had it's details meticulously ran through a baking process (as one example).

2. Tech support knows their game will run on older setups but don't want to have to deal with troubleshooting those older rigs might cause.

3. Microsoft has made it easier (for instance I can only purchase commercial registration for ModTools if I belong to XNA) to use XNA to develop and M$ being biased to 'MS' defaults XNA into kicking out productions requiring the latest Microsoft OS to run.

I do recall, however, that if the developer truly knows what they are doing, there's a way to option XNA compiled games to be backwards compatible.

But like most people will have Win 8 in 2014 because it will default on the petition of their new 'puters - XNA appears to default settings for respecting the latest OS rather it disregards Microsoft's previous works.

And you have to wonder about a company that admits that it's operating systems are crap by bringing out a new one every three years and trying to get the message across to scrap the last..

Remember - Sega made consoles one time not so long ago.

People like you are maybe 5% of the target group. Why on earth should companies bother with your requests? If you would simply saved the money of those 80 games you can't play you would nearly be there with a new rig.

I paid 500€ in 2009 for a rig and I can play every game released. Some even on very high settings. I upgraded my graphics card as my other was to loud and since then I can play new games even on high settings without a problem.

Seriously, give the developers a break. It is hard enough to develop a game for current PC, spending hours and hours (and thousands of dollars) so that some Windows 2000 machine can play it is a pointless endeavour.

Okay, let me tell you one thing. A really important one.

The entire purpose of your operating system is to get all the metal in your case to communicate together. There's a lot of other shit added on top of that, but this is the key thing. That's why you need an OS in the first place.

As you probably know, hardware keeps developing. Crazy, I know. You've got your Moore law there, everything. It's kind of shocking how much hardware changed over the last decade alone. Did you know that when XP was released, USB2 was brand new technology, and no more than a handful of people knew what Wi-Fi was?

Therefore, saying that releasing a new OS every three years is equal to admitting the previous OS is crap is just ludicrous. New OSes are released because they've got to keep up with new hardware. You could, theoretically, build a brand new machine today and install XP on it, but 1) XP is unable to use 64-bit CPU instructions (and I'm told XP64 was a largely experimental and unstable release), 2) XP is unable to address more than 4 GB of RAM and 3) XP's support for multi-core processors is sorely lacking, because they weren't around when the system was developed; the result being that your new computer would be severely crippled by your choice of OS. And before you ask, adding all of those features to XP would require you to make massive changes to the system's kernel, and, well, when Microsoft started making massive changes to the system's kernel, they ended up with Vista/7.

Tl;dr: Backwards compatibility is a nice thing to have, but the development of hardware is inevitably going to break it sooner or later. You just can't stop progress.

EDIT: Corrected a factoid there.

Hence why we really need a "Winbox" akin to Dosbox, but it will likely never happen due to licensing issues. Which is balls.

Not necessarily. You don't need to emulate Windows 95/98, you just need to emulate their functions for it to work. Setting up a program that allows for older processing instructions should do the trick.

Umm, why? I'm not familiar with the game, but I see it's just been released on Steam the other day, so I'd assume it runs on W7 just fine?
Incidentally, I'm probably going to buy and install Windows 8 on my primary machine before the year is out, and the last game I finished a few weeks ago was Ultima IV (1985). There's no conflict between the two.

Chill man, stop making that BS up. Games released nowadays still work on XP. There are only a few exceptions. And that OS was released 9 or 10 years ago, Jesus. Not even console cycles are that fucking long.
That game works even on xp, according to the official system requirements. I don't even know what he's talking about.

Hate... such a strong emotion. "Just" do not use that service anymore. *sigh* I wish that even a quarter of all these steam complainers would man up and just don't use it anymore.

Yeah, you will miss some games. Big ones. Franchises you love. But from experience I can tell you that it does not hurt anymore after you managed to ignore first few. If you still go there while complaining how much it sucks: Sorry; you are a whiny weakling!

Edit/Clarification: That goes just to the complainers. NOT to those which use steam and enjoy it.

I should probably point out that I don't actually believe that the even-numbered Star Trek films are crap. I actually liked Insurrection, The Final Frontier and Generations. The even-numbered thing is a sci-fi in-joke.

You mean odd-numbered.

I like all the Star Trek movies, because I am super fanboy man, but even I admit the odd-numbered ones are surprisingly the bottom 5, easily.