It is just a given.  Windows 7 will focus more on being less of a hog, more DX10/11 focus, WinFS, etc.  It will strive to outdo Vista by being less demanding and more streamlined.  The real question is as follows: Will Windows 7 prop up PC gaming to more of an XP-style popularity?  That is to say that modern PC gaming can compete with consoles and not just for WoW, Crysis, and uber-graphics.  Can Microsoft position their next OS as a platform to make hardcore PC gamers proud?

Thoughts?  --Please, no Mac vs. PC vs. Linux stuff--

very possible , microsoft is not going to make an other big mistake with their OS...

Well...why would it ever make sense for a company to release an OS worse than the previous? Of course they'll try to do all those things. This time it's likely they'll get closer...but they'll still do things wrong.

They probably will try to keep all the gaming just in Windows, like Windows Live. There's plenty of things Microsoft can do to screw things up.

Microsoft can do whatever the hell they want, including rebuilding the system completely anew and not just adding onto it. The thing is they probably won't so we will just have to wait and see. Also in 100 years when they decide to write a OS fromt he ground up, they should use something other than C languages. C is the main reason why Windows is so unstable and has security holes.

Look at the last 10 versions of Windows, what makes you think they won't do it again?

Windows 7 will be based on vista. I think it will be just like vista + some extra content. That doesn't stop there. Even windows that comes after windows 7 will be based on vista. I think windows is losing its potential as gaming OS. Even now some games play much better on linux, even if you have to emulate windows. Imagine games that has been natively coded for linux.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Codename-Quebec-Will-be-Vista-based-Just-Like-Windows-7-87485.shtml

You can't have this, if you want debate about "Is MS next OS good platform for gamers.". :)

Windows will always be bloated as long as businesses rely on compatibility, although virtualization may be M$'s key to change their current predicament.

unless they redo the whole thing.

From what I've heard, Win7 is something all together new. Old apps will run in emulation. I don't know if this is good or bad, time will tell.

They've already said they aren't redoing it, but that they're taking Vista, adding some new features, and getting the existing features slimmed down. Check the interwikis for some info.

Including

15 Second bootups

According to Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program, only 35% ^[32] of Vista SP1 can boot up in 30 second or less, the slow boot-up mainly due to some services or programs which are not absolutely required, are loaded when the OS is launching. In order to solve this problem, Microsoft has set aside a team to work solely on the issue, and that team aims to "significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times." They "focused very hard on increasing parallelism of driver initialization." Also, it aims to "dramatically reduce" the number of system services—along with their processor, storage, and memory demands. They also put up a discussion pole: Welcome to our blog dedicated to the engineering of Microsoft Windows 7 to discuss the start up times in particular.