Former DirectX man says Vista mistakenly blocks games

Microsoft's a bit chuffed about the launch of Windows Vista today, but amidst the smiles and platitudinous posturing there are already murmurs of dissent - with former DirectX star Alex St. John claiming that Vista "breaks" casual games through overly restrictive security protocols.

St. John - these days the chief executive of WildTangent - has said that his company had to spend a year getting its games to work with Vista, for which it now offers a free update on its website. "We worked with nearly every major casual game developer to get their games tested and compatible with Vista in our network in anticipation of these problems," he said.

It's not all good news though. "Parents who choose to use Vista's parental controls are likely to accidentally block access to hundreds of very popular family friendly games that happen not to have ESRB ratings," says St. John, referring to other game products distributed through Yahoo, RealArcade and even Microsoft's own MSN network.

Microsoft hasn't had anything to say yet, but Ellie's off at a launch event in London schmoozing so we'll try and get her to see what they say.