directx 12 DirectX 12 Coming to Xbox One

[Houtei]

Aaaand no comment on the most critical component, Windows 7 support. Weak performance from Microsoft as per usual.

 

Even if they've got 1:1 support for D3D12 on D3D11 class hardware, limiting themselves to Windows >=8 only gives them 20% share at best. Less if they make 8.1 mandatory for support on 8.x.

For one most gamers are already on windows 8 because it performs much better than windows 7 game wise and second  a lot more people will move to 8 once directx12 comes out.  Just because windows 7 has a larger share doesnt mean they have that many more gamers.  Probably 90% of that share is buisiness. 

 

I hated metro at first but switched because its just better for game play for me.  After being on it for half a year now i cant stand going back to windows 7 lol

[HawkMan]

With games coming out for DX12 in the 2015 holiday season, spending resources on a Win7 version makes little point. Windows 9 should be out by then. And with XBOX ONE getting DX12 it pretty much means every game will at least have a DX12 mode as well.

What does this mean? It means that gamers can chose to play in DX Something inferior on Win7 OR they can play with better graphics and performance by upgrading to windows 8.1, 9 or newer.

Basically there's no reason for them to make a windows 7 version and every reason not to. Gamers will follow the performance, which means they will upgrade.

[Boo Berry]

Gamers are probably waiting for Windows 9 anyways and that could be a factor why DX12 is nearly a year and a half from launch. They're probably putting their money in a successful Windows 9 launch that (hopefully) satisifies all Metro and lack of start menu haters. :p

[Athernar]

For one most gamers are already on windows 8 because it performs much better than windows 7 game wise and second  a lot more people will move to 8 once directx12 comes out.  Just because windows 7 has a larger share doesnt mean they have that many more gamers.  Probably 90% of that share is buisiness. 

 

I hated metro at first but switched because its just better for game play for me.  After being on it for half a year now i cant stand going back to windows 7 lol

 

Windows 7 has 62% share, Windows 8.0 and 8.1 combined has 20% according to the Steam survey. So no, most gamers are on Windows 7, and DirectX 12 is not going to change that, as DirectX 10 has demonstrated in the past.

[Blackhearted]

For one most gamers are already on windows 8 because it performs much better than windows 7 game wise and second  a lot more people will move to 8 once directx12 comes out.  Just because windows 7 has a larger share doesnt mean they have that many more gamers.  Probably 90% of that share is buisiness. 

 

I hated metro at first but switched because its just better for game play for me.  After being on it for half a year now i cant stand going back to windows 7 lol

 

Lol no. There's FAR more people gaming on 7 than 8. Just look at the steam hardware survey. And i doubt a ton more gamers will be flocking to a new version of windows until microsoft makes one that isn't a massive step backwards for desktop usage.

[Boo Berry]

Wait for Windows 9 then, it'll probably correct the 'mistakes' made with Windows 8.x. As for the performance between Windows 7 and 8.x in games, it's known there's a performance increase on Windows 8.x, abeit how small the performance increase may be.

 

Basically wait and see. But don't be surprised if they don't develop DX12 for Windows 7.

[HawkMan]

Let's jot make this a windows 8 desktop discussion. Meanwhile I can game, run desktop apps and photoshop and 3ds max on my windows 8 as or more efficiently as on 7.

As I said, with the XO getting DX12 it will make all PC games have a far more efficient and better looking DX12 mode. Only on windows 8 and up. this will bring gamers to windows 8 and up

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

^ I dunno about that. Didn't that backfire with XP for years and years?

[Athernar]

^ I dunno about that. Didn't that backfire with XP for years and years?

 

It did, and arguably there is/was far more justification in moving from XP to Vista/7 than from 7 to 8.

 

Little more than Microsoft fan fantasies honestly.

[trooper11]

MS seemed to hint at the end of this that they are at least considering support for Windows 7.

 

I know it may sound silly to some here, but if MS can make that happen without causing them too much trouble, I think it would be a great thing to do at least from a pr point of view.

 

 

Some here are quite jaded with anything MS does, but if MS was able to do this and show that they can do something unexpected, maybe some of those that are so dead set against MS would come around a bit.

[HawkMan]

^ I dunno about that. Didn't that backfire with XP for years and years?

Not since the 360 didn't have DX 10 so neither did their dev tools at the time allow you to make the game for both platforms with a single click.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg why there's no comparable situation between the two.

They never managed to push developers over on DX10+ until recently. Now they practically don't have a choice. There's also a much bigger performance gap with DX12.

MS seemed to hint at the end of this that they are at least considering support for Windows 7.

 

I'm pretty sure they just didn't want to say no. They might keep it on hold to see how the situation develops. But, even then a windows 7 versions seems at this point to not even have been worked on, and it requires a lot more work as well. So it'll be at the very least a year behind, meaning it might as well not exist.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

Not since the 360 didn't have DX 10 so neither did their dev tools at the time allow you to make the game for both platforms with a single click.

Their dev tools have never allowed you to target different versions of dx with a single click because of API and feature-set changes. So it wouldn't have happened even if the 360 had supported dx10.

[HawkMan]

Their dev tools have never allowed you to target different versions of dx with a single click because of API and feature-set changes. So it wouldn't have happened even if the 360 had supported dx10.

 

Their dev tools have allowed you to compile the same game for multiple platforms. I never said anythign about different version of DX. that was kind of the point. one click and they compile the game for DX12 Xbox One and DX12 PC in one go. 

[George P Global Moderator]

^ I dunno about that. Didn't that backfire with XP for years and years?

 

It had little to do with DX and more to do with developers slow to move off of it.  Add to the fact that most PC games based on console ports tended to use DX9 since most of the Xbox 360s API was DX9 with a little DX10 on top.   People shouldn't underestimate the impact console versions of games have on their PC counterparts regardless of what version of DX you have installed.

 

Also, Windows 9 should turn out to be what the desktop purists want, add in a cheap price to upgrade and I don't see why you'd justify sticking to Windows 7.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

Their dev tools have allowed you to compile the same game for multiple platforms. I never said anythign about different version of DX. that was kind of the point. one click and they compile the game for DX12 Xbox One and DX12 PC in one go. 

Switching gears like that is confusing since my post was about XP (and dx9) versus post-XP (and dx10) and how MS didn't see people jumping ship from dx9 because it didn't work on the platforms where gamers were (XP or 360). In any case, even if the 360 had had dx10 support, PC developers would largely have continued to target dx9 because developers target where the users are, not the other way around.

 

For multi-platform developers it seems a little muddier to me. Development efforts are never really a single click even if you setup the tool-chain to cross compile for all of the major platforms. Not bothering to selectively optimize for the platform generally leads to poor performance. Examples of that are numerous in the previous generations even for games that were cross platform between MS consoles and PC (for example: RE4, Beyond good and evil). A scenario with dx10 support for 360 would have led to development effort where you either chose to homogenize and support dx9 only for your PC builds or maintained two separate dx9 and dx10 builds. I'm sure there would have been some developers who would go the latter path, but I still don't think it would have been common considering that game developers have limited resources, in those years post-XP had a little user-base and shotty hardware support for the longest time, and targeting separate PC XP and PC post-XP builds just adds more work into the mix. What are the incentives or developers to do the separate build in those cases? Seems to me it would have been a poor choice of resources at the time.

 

EDIT: actually, I think the confusion was only my fault. I was much too vague in my own post. So I don't think the switching gears part makes sense anymore :-p

 

 

It had little to do with DX and more to do with developers slow to move off of it.  Add to the fact that most PC games based on console ports tended to use DX9 since most of the Xbox 360s API was DX9 with a little DX10 on top.   People shouldn't underestimate the impact console versions of games have on their PC counterparts regardless of what version of DX you have installed.

 

Also, Windows 9 should turn out to be what the desktop purists want, add in a cheap price to upgrade and I don't see why you'd justify sticking to Windows 7.

Developers are slow for a reason -- lack of dx10 support on the platforms where users are is a good reason for them to be slow. I make an argument above (in this post) for how I think it would have played out if the 360 had DX10 support. I personally don't feel it would have been much different because at the end of the day, developers would have targeted dx9 on PC regardless since most PC gamers were there, and there really wasn't a good incentive at the time for them putting effort into developing an additional dx10 version for PC given the lack of users.

 

I would say if users migrate to Win9, there's no good reason for developers to not target dx12. I think It's a bit too speculative at this point though.

[George P Global Moderator]

Switching gears like that is confusing since my post was about XP (and dx9) versus post-XP (and dx10) and how MS didn't see people jumping ship from dx9 because it didn't work on the platforms where gamers were (XP or 360). In any case, even if the 360 had had dx10 support, PC developers would largely have continued to target dx9 because developers target where the users are, not the other way around.

 

For multi-platform developers it seems a little muddier to me. Development efforts are never really a single click even if you setup the tool-chain to cross compile for all of the major platforms. Not bothering to selectively optimize for the platform generally leads to poor performance. Examples of that are numerous in the previous generations even for games that were cross platform between MS consoles and PC (for example: RE4, Beyond good and evil). A scenario with dx10 support for 360 would have led to development effort where you either chose to homogenize and support dx9 only for your PC builds or maintained two separate dx9 and dx10 builds. I'm sure there would have been some developers who would go the latter path, but I still don't think it would have been common considering that game developers have limited resources, in those years post-XP had a little user-base and shotty hardware support for the longest time, and targeting separate PC XP and PC post-XP builds just adds more work into the mix. What are the incentives or developers to do the separate build in those cases? Seems to me it would have been a poor choice of resources at the time.

 

EDIT: actually, I think the confusion was only my fault. I was much too vague in my own post. So I don't think the switching gears part makes sense anymore :-p

 

 

Developers are slow for a reason -- lack of dx10 support on the platforms where users are is a good reason for them to be slow. I make an argument above (in this post) for how I think it would have played out if the 360 had DX10 support. I personally don't feel it would have been much different because at the end of the day, developers would have targeted dx9 on PC regardless since most PC gamers were there, and there really wasn't a good incentive at the time for them putting effort into developing an additional dx10 version for PC given the lack of users.

 

I would say if users migrate to Win9, there's no good reason for developers to not target dx12. I think It's a bit too speculative at this point though.

 

 

There's always a delay on users shifting to a new system, but regardless, to take full advantage of a new version of DX you'd need a new GPU, odds are that the people who would bother to upgrade the video card to stay up to date are also the ones who would upgrade their OS to the newest version.   Or when you buy a new PC in general you're upgrading both.  DX10 at the start wasn't what MS fully intended it to be, really DX11 is what DX10 should've been from what I remember.  NVidia had a hand to plan in this as well, MS changed some things in DX10 around the spec to help NVidia out while at the time ATi was ready and fully supported it like it was meant to be.  It's also why, iirc, ATi/AMD was the first to have DX11 cards out while NVidia lagged behind a bit. 

 

After it's all said and done, I don't see the lack of Windows 7 support as a negative, specially not if Windows 9 shapes up to be how people expect.  Even those who where on the fence with Windows 8 seem to like it now with 8.1U1 and the changes it brought.    The big thing in all this is the fact that DX12 will for the first time have a wider reach compared to before, hardware is a given, while current DX11 cards might not get 100% of the features,  even the performance advantages makes it worth it.  There's also the XB1 factor and mobile now to, as they said, with DX12 on XB1, PC and WP it makes the porting process easier/quicker and so on.  With the right tools/SDK and so on even with no Windows 7 the adaption rate for DX12 will be higher than before, once it's on the XB1 it'll be used regardless for one thing, and with mobile there's also another area were it'll be used to, porting between XB1 and WP8.1 for example or WP9, whatever version ends up with it. 

 

That's not to say they won't do a version for Windows 7, but if they do it'll come after all the rest, at best we're talking 2H15 or early into 2016.  By then who knows what could happen?