Just Yesterday, we informed you guys about the compatibility feature in Windows 7 called XP Mode also known as XPM. While reading through that post, many of you guys who are crazy about gaming just like me, might have had a query in mind that whether XPM will support games or not. Well the bad news is that it wont support games.
There are multiple reasons associated with this. First, XPM is a compatibility technology whose targeted audience is businesses and enterprises and not consumers. It is licensed for Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise flavors of Windows 7. Now another thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft introduced this technology primarily to remove the final deployment blockers (related to compatibility) and hurdles for its upcoming operating system. Many businesses use older or custom based applications which are developed and built on older versions of Windows. In order to facilitate them, this technology is provided.
Second reason is that XPM is Virtual PC (vNext 7.0) based technology and is in no way related to Hyper-V. So the performacne you will get from XPM will be quite similar to the one you see with VPC these days. To put it in simpler words, XPM is not suited to applications requiring high performance such as games.