Wow! Microsoft DirectX Adopting SPIR-V Moving Forward

[Artim]

what? D3D is literally the major API of the xbox consoles... Now I may be mistaken, but last time I checked Xbox was one of the most popular consoles... I would hardly say it's irrelevant inside the console space.

Mlau was probably listing it under Windows (as afaik it does run Windows). But yes, at least according to statcounter, XBox has over 60 % marketshare and thus is quite relevant.

Question is what APIs the PlayStation supports. So for games that are meant to run at least on both, Studio may just opt to use an API that they can use on both instead of D3D. But that's the question to be answered. How many of the XBox games actually use D3D and how many opt for other APIs?

[Quackdoc]

Mlau was probably listing it under Windows (as afaik it does run Windows). But yes, at least according to statcounter, XBox has over 60 % marketshare and thus is quite relevant.

Question is what APIs the PlayStation supports. So for games that are meant to run at least on both, Studio may just opt to use an API that they can use on both instead of D3D. But that's the question to be answered. How many of the XBox games actually use D3D and how many opt for other APIs?

as far as I know, The primary API on xbox is D3D, the primary API on PS is GNM(X) and the primary API on the switch is NVN. Note that while the switch does technically have vulkan support. It's fine for a "better then opengl" experience, but it's not great, context here https://github.com/devkitPro/deko3d?...-vulkan-driver.

as far as I know, Playstation and Xbox have no shared APIs. Xbox supports vulkan via mesa's d3d12 backend AKA GLon12 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/direc...aunch-on-xbox/, and may support vulkan via dzn in the future. So it can be worth targeting vulkan for applications wanting to target that, but dzn is a ways off.

[blackiwid]

They just killed XBox as hardware, will have to give up meaningfull Xbox S support because the fucking garbage hardware can't even produce >720p stable, they moved all their games to this xbox pass, do they care if people would by xbox pass for Linux? No a sell is a sell...

Maintaining a own tool set just for the only reason to be incompatible is also a cost, meanwhile most games run nice under Linux anyway, They math just don't plays out anymore.

5 years ago they weren't that big of a games company, if they make windows games incompatible to Linux their own games written with that technology might sell less because of missing steam deck compatibility, also they barely can keep up with Linux development, if you install 5 times windows 11 you get with AMD hardware 15 different FPS numbers apparently based on a random generator or something alike...

I mean the same reason they just mostly go away from exclusive Xbox games, and port all their games so PS5 there they even pay devs to make it compatible with the competitor, here they just stop paying money to prevent 3rd party to make the games intentionally incompatible to Linux, this makes sense why should they threat Linux so vastly opposite than PS5?

Could there be same plan to Extinguish Linux, sure but if so, it will fail because Linux has proven again and again that it is immune to this attempts, and for all the people that believe that MS plays 3d chess and always succeeds with their plans, they didn't plan to have Xbox completely die, yet it happened that is a zombie console and Sony has won the Console wars (and so far Nintendo on the Handheld Console front).

[Artim]

as far as I know, The primary API on xbox is D3D, the primary API on PS is GNM(X) and the primary API on the switch is NVN. Note that while the switch does technically have vulkan support. It's fine for a "better then opengl" experience, but it's not great, context here https://github.com/devkitPro/deko3d?...-vulkan-driver.

as far as I know, Playstation and Xbox have no shared APIs. Xbox supports vulkan via mesa's d3d12 backend AKA GLon12 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/direc...aunch-on-xbox/, and may support vulkan via dzn in the future. So it can be worth targeting vulkan for applications wanting to target that, but dzn is a ways off.

Yes, it seems the cross-platform games just use some abstraction and must specifically support each API.

[Artim]

I mean the same reason they just mostly go away from exclusive Xbox games, and port all their games so PS5 there they even pay devs to make it compatible with the competitor, here they just stop paying money to prevent 3rd party to make the games intentionally incompatible to Linux, this makes sense why should they threat Linux so vastly opposite than PS5?

MS isn't a bunch of mercenaries. They only did that because otherwise they would have never been allowed to buy Activision otherwise. With over 60 % market share, antitrust authorities don't look too kindly on buyouts that can even increase that by a lot.

And what on earth have you smoked that you think MS had to pay anyone to make their games incompatible with Linux? They just are because they have to use a boatload of proprietary bs, either D3D on the XBox or D3D plus Kernel level anti-cheat on Windows. And thank the gods they are too lazy to develop something like the latter for Linux. The ones for Windows are already bad enough.

they didn't plan to have Xbox completely die, yet it happened that is a zombie console and Sony has won the Console wars (and so far Nintendo on the Handheld Console front)

Highly questionable. Just a year ago they completely obliterated Sony's market share, and in contrast to Windows on the Desktop it doesn't really look like that they are going down that much. Sure, Sony has regained quite a lot of market share, but the gap merely got smaller, nothing indicates yet a longterm success for Sony.

[blackiwid]

MS isn't a bunch of mercenaries. They only did that because otherwise they would have never been allowed to buy Activision otherwise. With over 60 % market share, antitrust authorities don't look too kindly on buyouts that can even increase that by a lot.

You refer here to the less exclusive statements from 2022 but I refer to mid 2023 where they doubled down, that can't be related to authorities...

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2023/06/microsoft-says-xbox-has-been-losing-the-console-wars-since-2001/

The following year, Spencer told Kotaku that "the consoles are not where the profit in this side of the business is made,” and that instead the focus needed to be “all about how many games are people playing. And how much people are spending playing those games and how often they play."

And what on earth have you smoked that you think MS had to pay anyone to make their games incompatible with Linux?

If you reinvent the wheel that costs money, everybody could use Vulkan which they would get cost free they could add some stuff or try to get it into upstream, that would clearly be cheaper, developing some % of the code is cheaper to make 100% of the code.

Highly questionable. Just a year ago they completely obliterated Sony's market share, and in contrast to Windows on the Desktop it doesn't really look like that they are going down that much. Sure, Sony has regained quite a lot of market share, but the gap merely got smaller, nothing indicates yet a longterm success for Sony.

From what do you fantasize? Any source I have up there 1 source here another, and they seem to quote Microsoft themself, so what the hell are you talking about? Any source for this absurd claim?

https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-admits-xbox-has-lost-the-console-wars-as-it-battles-for-69-billion-activision-blizzard-buyout

https://www.ft.com/content/5b385502-47ac-48a7-9c30-cd044d5488bd

The complete press including MS themself disagree with your fantasy.

image.png

And even 80% of this fewer xboxes are garbage Xbox S consoles, that developer start to refuse to implement their game at least as a single release they might do the Switch thing, like releasing first on real next gen consoles and then 6 months later they might release a very graphically inferior optimized version to hit the 720p target otherwise they need to go dynamic resolution 480p to 720p because they can't hit the 720p target on this last gen hardware.

[Blisterexe]

Not quite right either. Microsoft is looking to provide security options outside kernel to reduce the number of vendors that have to be allowed to provide drivers and the like that operate in kernel mode.

Microsoft is looking at changing the requirements to get drivers signed by Microsoft. So for some parties Microsoft will be eliminating kernel access so far Microsoft has not said this is blanket.

I stopped looking into it when i realized it was not a ban, so i must have missed the nuance, so thank you for clearing that up for me.

[MillionToOne]

I think the Crowdstrike incident showed well enough how well that works. The driver was signed and supposedly tested, yet a file consisting only of zeros was enough to crash it. That begs the question of how something that simple has not been tested.

It didn't require testing. It was an update to the channel config file, which led to the issue. Not the driver.

[Artim]

You refer here to the less exclusive statements from 2022 but I refer to mid 2023 where they doubled down, that can't be related to authorities...

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2023/06/microsoft-says-xbox-has-been-losing-the-console-wars-since-2001/

The aquirement was only finished in october 2023, so obviously your arguments from mid 2023 are also still about the authorieties. You can read up on when the regulatory authorieties actually approved the deal here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquis...y_Microsoft#Re gulatory_response

And the notion of MS losing the console wars since 2001 can only be described as utter marketing bs. Statcounter sadly only has data since 2012 for consoles - and only since late 2013 for the XBox - but MS has been on a steady incline since and completely turned the market share in early 2023. So the numbers do absolutely not agree.

If you reinvent the wheel that costs money, everybody could use Vulkan which they would get cost free they could add some stuff or try to get it into upstream, that would clearly be cheaper, developing some % of the code is cheaper to make 100% of the code.

Please stop spreading nonsense when you clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Every console only uses its own proprietary API because they have the full control over it. With Vulkan, a lot of work would be needed to upstream all the necessary features. That could actually have been the death sentence of the XBox, as Sony had a much lower level API that was also inspired by Mantle years earlier. Moving not only their own software, but all vendors of game engines from D3D11 to something fundamentally different like Vulkan would most certainly not have been cheaper, but vastly more expensive and time consuming. While D3D12 is much more low level than any of its predecessors, it's most likely still much closer to the DX familiy than Vulkan can ever be.

From what do you fantasize? Any source I have up there 1 source here another, and they seem to quote Microsoft themself, so what the hell are you talking about? Any source for this absurd claim?

https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-admits-xbox-has-lost-the-console-wars-as-it-battles-for-69-billion-activision-blizzard-buyout

https://www.ft.com/content/5b385502-...0-cd044d5488bd

Who the fuck gives a damn about marketing bs, when you can just cite actual numbers. Like these: https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-ma...-201208-202408
The numbers from statcounter say the same: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ems-worldwide/
The only statistics I could find saying something different where these: https://www.counterpointresearch.com...from-nintendo/

The complete press including MS themself disagree with your fantasy.

image.png

No, not the "complete press", just MS' marketing morons and one highly questionable graph where I can't even find the original source for

And even 80% of this fewer xboxes are garbage Xbox S consoles, that developer start to refuse to implement their game at least as a single release they might do the Switch thing, like releasing first on real next gen consoles and then 6 months later they might release a very graphically inferior optimized version to hit the 720p target otherwise they need to go dynamic resolution 480p to 720p because they can't hit the 720p target on this last gen hardware.

Any proof for your nonsense? And maybe this time not from some highly questionable source...

[Artim]

It didn't require testing. It was an update to the channel config file, which led to the issue. Not the driver.

I never claimed that an update to the driver was the issue. But MS knew the driver is loading additional code upon initiation that's not going through their tests. And they didn't even bother doing some tests if they could find some obvious input that would have the driver crap its pants? How incompetent can you even be to not test for something like that? Sure, Crowdstrike isn't any less competent for letting this happen and causing that much damage, but if you are the instance that a) allows such low level access and b) certifies such drivers to make sure they won't just nuke your users machines, you have quite some responsibility too.