Windows 8.1 / Visual Studio 2013

I agree that for new projects targeting Win 8 it makes sense to use Windows SDK. But if you work on a project that started with DirectX SDK you will have a lot of work migrating your code to Windows SDK. Even more so if you want to support Windows 7 as target platform. So I think it is a question of how much time you want to invest to go from DirectX SDK to Windows SDK.

Going from DirectX SDK to Windows SDK may involve the following. (List is from my memory - I may not be up-to-date in some cases.)

• 
  Change all usage of D3DX math to DirectXMath. If your math code is cluttered basically everywhere this alone is a very big effort.
  


• 
  Effects framework is gone! Either reuse the one from DirectX SDK, use the new Shader Libraries (only available for Win 8) or write your own Framework. Also a very big issue.


• Sound is handled differently. if you used 3d sound and the management tools from DirectX SDK be prepared for a complete rerwrite of your sound code.


• There is no texture loading provided by WIndows SDK, look for alternatives or write your own code. ( I chose to include the DirectXTex library http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=248926)

This resulted in a complete rewrite of my whole project. It was ok for me, because I did want to change the architecture of my code anyway. But for others it may be far easier to just continue using their existing DirectX SDK projects with Visual Studio 2013. Which, after setting the required library and include file paths, works very well. Also advanced features like shader debugging work with new Visual Studio and old DirectXSDK projects.