Im sure the "master race" will keep them alive and well lol

 Not to be a jackass but iwasn't awareof a master race.  It just comes down to dollars, and what effect will declining Windows sales have on DirectX ?

PC gamers....they comically refer to themselves as a master race.

That was because DX10 and Vista weren't very good. DX9 lasted from 2002 and graphics architecture was evolving much faster back then and until very recently was still the dominant version.  It is time for DX12 but given the slow adoption of DX11 and the relatively slower pace of major architecture changes in the GPU space it's not surprising they haven't rushed it out. 11 has had two revisions that both added support for new features.

True, true. DirectX 11 game out so quickly because DX10 needed some refindment.  DirectX 10 was a major change behind the scenes for the platform and some legacy support was dropped.  But DX10 didn't work that well, so DX 11 fixed much of the problems and expanded on what it was already doing.  Many games just skipped DX 10.

I remember Microsoft saying DirectX 12 was waiting till hardware got better.  But their press releases make it look much more like DirectX 12 than an update of DirectX11.  But they have also stated that DirectX 12 will not launch till Windows 9.  So even if they show off the platform of DirectX 12, how long till we start seeing it in computers?  Think it might still be a few years?

Win 9 is set to be announced in April, and should be released within a year of then so not too far off. After XP they changed back to a faster cycle with a new Windows every ~3 years.

That would also coincide with the new super low power, yet very powerful cpu's that are supposed coming out from Intel past Broadwell, to the new Bay Trail.  They are trying to make 'fanless tech'  which will conserve and save power.  So Windows 9 in 2015?  I know that 'fast three years' was the plan, seems like they are keeping up with it.

So looks like some Windows 9 and DirectX 12 info is coming our way.

Yet, I think it will be still probably 2 years give or take till we see DirectX 12 really used on a game you can buy.  Anything specific you are hoping to see?

Specifically bringing DX in line with Mantle is all they really need to do for DX12. Things like a truly multi-threaded draw calls, Explicit command buffer control, Asynchronous compute queue for overlapping of compute and graphics workloads, Asynchronous DMA queue for data uploads, and support for UMA and APUs etc would be more than enough improvements. And that should speed up adoption somewhat as well if developers can port over their work on Mantle over to DX12.

It not really cornering the market. Those engines also use OpenGL/AL for cross platform support, since those API's are platform agnostic (not made for one specific OS)

Here is a quick primer before I go further; you can view a computer as being made of many different layers or stories, and some of these stories are divided even further. In programming the major layers are: (These are the abstraction layers I learned there are various models that abstract things a little differently.)

Machine (Lvl 0 - Binary, this allows for direct control of the hardware so you can make it do what it wasn't orginally intended to do)

Hardware (Lvl 1- Mantel, Assembly, PhysX, etc - These are the manufactures propritary languages that are supplied to help programmers use their hardware the way its intended)

OS (Lvl 2 - Windows, UNIX, LINUX, MacOS (techinically its a form of LINUX), Android, iOS, etc - you can manipulate the OS into doing different things with the drivers it has)

API (Lvl 3 - DirectX, Open GL/AL, and a bunch of others - You use this as a go between so you don't have to program for a specific OS, with the exception of DirectX)

Software (Lvl 4 - Emulation, Webbased)

Optimization of code especially when dealing with Input and Graphics usually involve by-passing some of the uppper levels and using the lower level programming to make the software run faster and to squeaze most of the power out of a subset of hardware. Alot of control I/O it is recommended to program it at either the Hardware or Machine Levels to decrease lag.

OK, My main point... The higher the level you program in the less powerful things you can do with the program. DirectX has traditionally been only for Windows on PC and the Xbox, the windows phones has been using DirectGL/AL as their programming API because it is less bulky and comes in more flavors. Since they are listing mobile devices and historically DirectX isn't used, this is probally going to be 11.3 major revision that includes a subset of commands that are made especially for machines running a Windows kernel on a mobile device. And as for the power since AMD finally released a new standard set for their hardware they may be making DirectX 3D so it can be modified to scan and use PhyX or Mantel make some rudementary optimization possible with just DirectX.

to me threshold will be win9 only by name to differentiate itself from win8 in people eye and create that one good OS out of two effect they are famous for....
the point of threshold is to unify even more their ecosystem across all platform while giving back some of the old-school features people are requesting especially in the enterprise ecosystem....
it will be the best of both worlds compatible with other systems.... a win 8.5 at t branded win9.... wouldn't be surprised if it was free or 15 bucks to upgrade for people with 8.1

we'll see, BUILD is soon and it will be interesting since I believe WP and Xbox will be at the forefront and win"9" will only be talked about the far off future... that should build up some nice buzz in the tech community.... and hopefully stimulate creativity amongst OEMs

cause while MS can be criticized for win8 I put as much blame on the OEMs for their lack of originality and boldness in concept innovation.... now people don't upgrade because of power increase (beside gamers) they upgrade because it has more versatility and looks and feel better to use than the current laptop they have...