Interview With Initiator of DirectX 58
Miguel de Icaza writes "There's a great interview from Shacknews with Alex St. John, one of the earlier DirectX / gaming guys. He talks about almost losing his job going against Bill Gates, and talks a bit about the MS development & political process. 'You know why the X on the Xbox is a glowing green X? The original codename for Direct X was the Manhattan Project, because strategically it was an effort to displace Japanese game consoles with PCs and ultimately the Xbox. We called it the Manhattan Project because that was the codename for the program developing the nuclear bomb. We had a glowing radiation logo for the prototype for Direct X, and of course as soon as that got out and the press covered it, it caused a scandal.'"
Re:Most scathing comments about Vista yet (Score:4, Insightful)
True but just by reading what he says you can tell he's smart as a whip. He knew that gaming was one of the primary reasons anyone stuck with windows.
Re:Most scathing comments about Vista yet (Score:3, Insightful)
From a certain point of view, they are great. They offer products which do just about everything important, although I agree that they don't necessarily do a great job of any of them (look at it this way though, Microsoft is to Computer Associates as Einstein is to Dubya.) Microsoft is the 800 pound gorilla and that engenders either fear or respect, either of which can be said to confer greatness.
And if we take a look at the history of PC gaming, DirectX is a milestone that will stand for all eternity as the moment when someone pulled their head out of their ass and provided a useful API for game developers on a mainstream operating system.
Of course, Direct3D's release is a day that will live in eternal infamy, but you can't have everything (and D3D wasn't part of the original versions of DirectX.)
I don't know about Microsoft understanding gaming better than Sony, but the PS3 is hurtin' for certain. UK sales dropped by something like 68% in the second week. No one expects the launch week fervor to continue forever but Sony's lunch is being rapidly eaten by their competitors.
PS2 was the clear winner in the last generation, but it doesn't look like PS3 is a credible contender... They REALLY have to pull it out of the trash at this point, and I don't know if they have what it takes. I'm pretty sure they don't. Sony has a long history of fucking up a good thing with just a few elements of stupidity, like Minidisc and then later even NetMD, for example.