Editing DirectX (section)

==Versions==
DirectX has undergone many versions and revisions during its history. The first version wasn't widely used, and [[DirectX 2.0]] was used sparsely by such titles as [[Microsoft Football]]. It wasn't until [[DirectX 3.0]] that it became popular enough for widespread adoption by the video game industry.

After [[Windows XP]], Microsoft stopped offering DirectX as a separate downloadable component, instead shipping it directly with the operating system, and preventing it from being upgraded except as part of an operating system update (such as a service pack) or upgrade to a later version of that operating system, which would include an updated version of DirectX.

[[DirectX 8.1b]] was the last version compatible with [[Windows 95]], while [[DirectX 9.0c]] was the last available version available for [[Windows 98]], [[Windows Me]] and [[Windows XP]]. [[Windows Vista]] shipped with [[DirectX 10]], [[Windows 7]] with [[DirectX 11]], and [[Windows 8]] with [[DirectX 11.1]]. [[Windows 10]] shipped with [[DirectX 12]] upon release. [[Windows NT 4.0]] was only able to use [[DirectX 3.0a]] as the maximum supported version, although a beta of [[DirectX 5.0]] was made available to it.