Being that Creative are the ONLY company to have been shafted by Vista's new sound implementation (the only company to have 100% hardware based sound acceleration), I think it wholly innapropriate to take THEIR word for it.
As far as the sound API goes, it's pretty much the same as it has always been, except there is no hardware pass thru for DirectSound apps anymore. The new system is designed around Intel's HD audio standards, so is hardly a MS proprietary API.
Creative have already released a (beta) workaround that reroutes game DirectSound calls via OpenGL (which has full hardware acceleration capability as always), so there is really no point in the whining. Just Creative trying to cry about them being singled out basically.
As far as the sound API goes, it's pretty much the same as it has always been, except there is no hardware pass thru for DirectSound apps anymore. The new system is designed around Intel's HD audio standards, so is hardly a MS proprietary API.
Creative have already released a (beta) workaround that reroutes game DirectSound calls via OpenGL (which has full hardware acceleration capability as always), so there is really no point in the whining. Just Creative trying to cry about them being singled out basically.