We just witnessed that only three out of roughly fifty journalists on today's R700 event in Belgrade, Serbia, think that DirectX 10.1 is important.
When an AMD manager was asked why, yours truly said it is simply because AMD is not Nvidia and that Nvidia would make a big fuss if they had the API advantage.
At the same time, an AMD spinner said that you need all DirectX 10.1 elements to meet DirectX 11 specs; but he didn’t mention that DirectX 11 is not coming before the end of 2009. Nvidia will naturally support DirectX 11 and so will AMD, but that is far away.
Nvidia can make an API important simply due its relations with developers and publishers, and this is where a risky investment called The way it's meant to be P(l)ayed pays off. AMD is still in diapers when it comes to this.