WinXP is like a toy, I don’t consider it a real OS and I don’t use it for serious purposes. It’s nice for playing some games with a good out-of-the-box compatibility, so I see it like having a video-game. I don’t really mind if it will or not lose support, Microsoft programmers are a bunch of incompetent fools anyway. I will use it as long the community is hacking it and effectively making the improvements that Microsoft was never capable of doing.
Oh, it’s a common misconception that you can’t play games in Linux, but actually there are a lot of games that are released natively for Linux. All you need to do is double click it, install and play it - just like Windows. And for those released only for Windows, take a look at this:
http://appdb.winehq.org/
Besides Wine, there is also CrossOver, Win4Lin and, of course, you can always emulate any OS within linux using a VM. And if you use Virtualbox’s “Seamless mode”, there is a bonus: emulated apps seems native. Using these tools, I am able to play in linux almost all the games that I play when I’m in winXP partition. I can also use all emulators for all consoles in linux too, so I can play any rom I want. I even emulated Internet Explorer - the most problematic Windows app to emulate - within linux. Here, take a look:
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/3408/printseamlessmode.png
It’s not a matter of possibility, it’s a matter of skills. Linux is not meant to be used by an ordinary/casual computer user anyway, Windows would be the a better pick for these people. If casual users try to use Linux, they will not be able to do anything and they will probably say that Linux sucks, but actually what really sucks is their skills. So, if you hear that someone tryed to play games in Linux but he couldn’t because “linux sux”, translate it to “I tryed to use linux, but I suck and I will forever be a mediocre Windows user, but I’ll blame Linux for my lack of skills” hehehe
Yeah, you can’t rely on WinXP for 64 bits purposes, but you souldn’t count on Vista/7 too anyway. If you think that Vista and Win7 are good alternatives for 64 bits support, take a look at linux 64 bits real-time kernel.