I doubt neither ms or ati/nvidia thinks that way. ;)

Unless you can actually link to something proving me otherwise, 10.1 is fully compatibile with 10 hardware. While DX10 cards don't have all the features, they will have no problems running with DX10.1 games.

You'll also need a new card to support the new features of OpenGL3.0. How is OpenGL at any advantage in this regard?

Thats no good, its always much better with a open standard than one company owning a industry standard.

The good thing for Sony and Nintendo was that the last major change was the free shader architecture in DirectX9. DirectX10 consists of some obscure enhancements and is pretty much irrelevant. I doubt that this will change with DX11.

Wonderful, inferior lock-in proprietary crap over open standards.

mm, Quake & Quake 2. those were the days. Making maps for my mates with 100% death guaranteed at the end, such innocent times.

Since the only operating system which provides Direct X is Microsoft on Windows and some variant of it onthe Xbox. Open GL is the only choice on most hardware or in other operating systems Linux , UNIX , And Mac , and others (like PS3 or nintendo Wii) , on the windows platform it's the traditional API for CAD systems and also many games and fully supported by microsoft windows as well.

After many years of parallel existance the 2 API's (GL and DX) have borrowed and shared many features (well DX did the most borrowing since it came later to the game). Supporting the new graphics hardware, ATI and Nvidia have been the cause of most of the changes - more flexible hardware than ever now, the API's need to change to get full use from it.
If you want the widest possible support open GL is the only API which works across many platforms including windows.

Open standards I say! Damn you MS!

DX one the war years ago. OpenGL won't ever be made irrlevent until there is an open DX standard for linux, Mac and other hardware(ie open standards). OGL was gone once gaming was DX and PC ruled and that was years ago. Nintendo and Sony may use a OGl varient, but by no means OGL is running strong.

As a programmer, I have always preferred OpenGL to DX. Honestly DX sucked until it "evolved" into DX7 and practically copied OpenGL's API. MS has done a decent job since then, and their monopoly has pushed the DX standard faster than OpenGL has gotten pushed, which is sad/lame.

However, by effectively copying OpenGL's API since DX7, MS basically extended OpenGL's lifespan by a long while -- its easy to switch back and forth.  OpenGL is still taught to the fresh crop of computer scientists in college, as part of beginning graphics courses, and its pretty easy to switch back and forth, ever since DX7.