Yes, XP users were warned. The practice of abandoning support for older versions of MS software is something that happens across all Microsoft platforms, not just the OS business. It is the Microsoft business model and every user of XP knew this when they first started using XP.
In time, the platform will become unusable. If you are still on XP, get off of it. Otherwise do not complain when a third party provider who promises to keep XP running, so hoses it up that you lose all of your data, or worse.
New hardware is the primary driver of that. Today if you install XP onto a new PC it may or may not work. I have seen BSODs during setup. There is little that you can do, unless it is XPe and you are willing to play with drivers. In the best case you may get the XP running, but half of the hardware in the PC will be unusable, and no drivers will be available for download. XP makes sense today only coupled to the hardware that is designed to run it. If you have XP-only software, in many cases you are better off running XP in VirtualBox - the software-defined "hardware" will remain such for as long as there is a need, and modern multi-core PCs with large RAM are well suited for running a VM or two.