Valve Says Choice to Make DX10 Vista-Only Hurt PC Gaming 463
Erris writes "Valve's President Gabe Newell is calling Microsoft's choice to make DirectX 10 Vista-only a 'terrible mistake' that has harmed gaming. His company's latest hardware study shows the strategy has not moved gamers onto Vista. The result is that almost no one is using the newest version of DirectX, and companies are shying away from creating new input devices that support it. Nine months after release, after Christmas, after graduation, and with school mostly back in session, still only 8% of gamers are using it." Update: 08/27 21:09 GMT by Z : An AC points out that these numbers may be framed poorly given uptake numbers for XP's release.
Gaming the system for fun and profit (Score:5, Informative)
The original journal entry already had comments that poke holes in twitter's claim about those numbers, which is probably why it became inconvenient and forced him to switch to his sockpuppet [slashdot.org] account instead.
Ironically, the same story in Heise.de has a link to another one [heise.de] about a gaming convention in Leipzig drawing all-time record attendance. I suppose it's possible that DX10/Vista will hurt the gaming industry, but with the game release cycle being 12-16 months, I'd say that will be apparent later on.
Here [steampowered.com] is a direct link to the original Valve survey, which amusingly enough shows Vista as having an even larger market share among Valve gamers as it has overall (8% vs 5-6%). That means Vista's market share among gamers has been increasing at a rate of about 1% per month since it was released, which is even higher than XP's uptake vs. Windows 98/ME. I can't even begin to imagine what the relevance of Christmas and back to school as claimed by twitter is for gamers who probably switch OSes only when they switch their $3,000 boxes anyway, but I'd say that 8% share is actually not bad in that segment. That share will probably start growing more exponentially as time goes by.
Welcome to the Trolled By Twitter Club, Zonk.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:XP unable to support dx10 or what? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gaming the system for fun and profit (Score:5, Informative)
However, even while Vista has about 8%, Vista + DX 10 is 2.3% of users. That's about half as many as are using DX 7. About 15% use DX 8, and the rest are DX9 types.
In terms of being able to sell one's product to the most people, it then makes more sense to make sure DX 7 runs it well, than it does for DX10. Unless you want to jack the price up, to compensate. Let's see, to make a new game for just DirectX 10, that would be about... 2000$ for the same revenue stream, based on steam's percentage.
The other thing people forget, is how Microsoft's tools are no longer targetted at the PC, instead they are targeted at the Xbox. This has had rather (IMO) disastrous consequences for one game I play, Supreme Commander. GPG was being partly funded by Microsoft (or would have been, my memory is foggy), and it was intended to be the first DX10 game and use Microsoft's networking, etc.
This is great and all, but the way Microsoft and GPG used it, it has to be peer to peer. And each computer runs the sim. Which would be fine, if it weren't one of the most taxing games on a cpu currently existing. This would be fine in a homogeneous environment, such as the Xbox. However, PCs aren't. So if one person has a crappy computer, it will slow EVERYONE down.
Microsoft stands to make more money from Xbox, so they are either intentionally, or unintentionally, doing things which are killing the PC games market.
Re:XP unable to support dx10 or what? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Too bad Valve. (Score:3, Informative)
I call BS.
At the lowest level, a video driver (for XP or any architecture, really) just translates requests from applications (including the OS itself) into something the video card understands. Whether the video hardware can handle multiple simultaneous renderings or not depends only on the hardware and the API (in this case, Direct X provides the API, as exported by the actual driver).
For XP to support DX10 would require literally nothing more than compatible hardware with functional drivers supporting the DX10 API.
Now, some older apps may cause problems by trying to monopolize access to the screen, but that differs entirely from saying XP can't do it.
The whole driver-OS interface was changed.
Well... Yes, it has, because the OS changed. Which makes that something of a circular argument - DX10 will only run on Vista because the interface changed because OS changed and the only DX10 implementation uses that new interface. And Apache for Linux doesn't run on Windows, surprisingly enough.
It's strongarm tactics, IMHO (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft's approach to 'Vista only' has only propelled me further from their business. I used to be of the mindset that gaming platforms are so one dimensional and not useful for anything else but play games why would I want to buy one? Now, I'm actually considering buying a PS3 - and I *loath* Sony far more than Microsoft right now - but, I've determined that MS's gaming division isn't getting any more of my money because I see right through their shoddy business practice of strong-arming consumers into buying their OS.
I'll be damned if an XBox or Vista enters my house.
That being said, I also will refuse to purchase any product from any gaming company that *also* supports 'Vista only' games whether the title I'm currently interested in supports XP or not.
It's not 8%! (Score:5, Informative)
This is the relevant part of the survey you need to look at:
So indeed the author of that Journal was correct: ~2% or 1 in 50 users can't use DX10. In other words the people "poking holes" need to learn to read.
Just looking at the Nvidia card numbers we can easily see the problem is most likely Vista and not the cards themselves.
Roughly 37k out of 61k Nvidia users on Steam have DX10 cards but can not utilize DX10 because they have not upgraded to Vista. So approximately 60% out of a group of people composed of people who are cutting edge sorts, buyers of new computers, or people who've done a recent computer upgrade have not yet upgraded to Vista.
None of this is proper statistics of course but as far as this sort of thing goes that's a pretty shocking number. I want to believe gamers are being smart but the realistic side of me though says the most likely reason is simply that Vista has a lot of problems for gamers right now and they are just waiting till driver issues resolve.
Re:Gaming the system for fun and profit (Score:3, Informative)
twitter comment:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24993&cid=271
RazzleFrog reply:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24993&cid=271
Containing the sentence "Did you even read my post?"
Eris reply:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24993&cid=271
Where he says: "Sure I did, did you?"
Smoking gun...
I don't see how it is going to hurt (Score:4, Informative)
There's no reason to believe this won't continue. The only change is in how it is done. Rather than having multiple different render paths you can turn on and off with software options, that maybe people understand and maybe they don't, different render paths will use different DX versions. So if you want a SM 4.0 path, you use DX10, and so on.
The idea being that in the future, you'll be able to tell what your hardware supports and if you can run a game easily. You have a card that's DirectX 11. A game says "Requires Direct X 10.1, 11, 12, or better." You then know that your card will work fine, and that you probably won't get any eye candy benefit with anything better than a DX12 card.
Right now it is more confusing since cards only support older feature sets, but can use newer APIs. So say you have a GeForce Ti 4400. That's a DirectX 8 card. However, it can use DirectX 9.0c. But it isn't a 9.0c card, it doesn't support those features, it only supports the 8.0 features. So game makers either have to list cards that work, or refer to feature sets which users probably don't know about.
This is a much clearer way of doing it.
So I don't see the big problem here. To use DX10, you must have DX10 hardware which is very rare right now. Most people don't have it, most people don't care, games will continue to target DX9 (or even older). This is going to continue for some time. I bet games will still be targeting DX9 hardware when DX11 is out. I'm sure some of them will support the newer standard for more eye candy, but they won't all mandate it.
It's moving in a similar direction to OpenGL in that respect. If you look at nVidia cards, only the 5 (FX) series and later support GL 2.0, the earlier ones are 1.5 only. Why? They can't accelerate GL 2.0. Rather than have it implemented in either a semi-working fashion, or a slow software emulation, you just support the maximum level you can. It's going to be the same deal with DirectX. Rather than only supporting part of the latest API, you'll just support the level you are capable of.
Hopefully it should make it much clearer for all involved.
Re:Game developers chose this (Score:2, Informative)
Sockpuppets (Score:1, Informative)
If anyone still has any doubt that you are gaming Slashdot with sockpuppet accounts, they need to read this: [slashdot.org]
Keep reading indeed.
Re:I don't see how it is going to hurt (Score:2, Informative)
That's not really true.
Actually, you can download the Windows "nvemulate" utility for free and request your NVIDIA OpenGL driver emulate a level of GPU functionality beyond what your actual GPU hardware supports. You pick what GPU generation you want and you get all the OpenGL extensions for the GPU you are emulating. That includes getting OpenGL 2.0/2.1. All rendering that can run fully hardware accelerated continues to do so. See:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nvemulate.html [nvidia.com]
A fair number of students and developer using their laptops use this functionality to develop code for GPUs beyond what they have.
Caveats:
1) There's no support guarantee from NVIDIA for this mode.
2) It's pretty darn slooow if you fall back to software for most features.
3) nvemulate only applies to OpenGL, not Direct3D.
- Mark Kilgard, NVIDIA
Re:Actual experiences vs. FUDdy the boogeyman (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gaming the system for fun and profit (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Forced Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gaming the system for fun and profit (Score:3, Informative)
Hell, this whole discussion is moot as a version of DX10 WILL apparently be coming out for 2000/XP that will allow users of those operating systems to play pure DX10 games, but without all the bells and whistles.
Re:Proud of game makers (Score:5, Informative)
Not that it really matters, since any intelligent OpenGL user never works directly with the API any more than is absolutely necessary. The source code to any recent high profile game is big... No... fucking huge ass big! So to make things a little easier to follow, everything gets wrapped up in layers. Most companies use game engines that were developed by third parties in order to reduce the need to a) hire people that are really good at the low level 3D interfaces; and b) waste huge amounts of time on an engine for a single title, thereby pushing back their prospective release date by no less than 2 years. iD is one of the few companies that makes both the engine and the game. In fact, several game engines exist that are written by companies that never produced a game themselves. Ever heard of GameBryo?
On top of that, there are countless middleware libraries that address a huge gamut of issues. SpeedTree, OpenAL, SDL, GameFace, Bink, Smacker, Miles, RakNet, ad nauseam. The point is, only a very small number of games are written to directly use OpenGL and DX without some sort of wrapper, and the number of successful commercial titles in the last 8 years that wrote everything from scratch can probably be counted on one hand.
Anyhow, out of all of these libraries, there is a huge subset that actively supports Linux. Most of these libraries are written using very generic programming techniques, or at least provide a standard interface that never changes regardless of target platform, and provides the dirty system specific implementations as a run-time or compile-time plug in. It is much to their advantage to do things this way, as these libraries are expected to not only run in Windows, but also on consoles, and by that I mean pretty much all of them.
The reason they don't just release every game for Windows for Linux as well is because these middleware libraries often come with "per platform" licenses. "For $30,000, you can use this library in 1 title on 1 platform. Kick in another $15,000 and you get another platform license. Kick in a grand total of $75,000 and you can release it on all platforms it supports." The trouble is, most games are using anywhere from 2 to 6 middleware libraries, and that ends up being a lot of cash that they're expected to recoup on Linux support. Given the demographics that generally comes with Linux desktops (dual boot rigs for people that want to game with higher % of users that run cracked software, or grandparents that only check email and perform mild web browsing), it just plain isn't worth the effort, and certainly isn't worth the investment/risk ratio.
End of story.
So... what was TFA about?
Re: Forcing people away from Wine (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why OpenGL should have been the de facto standa (Score:5, Informative)
Let's start with the suspense in OpenGL versions. This was caused by a board that was taking too long to arbitrate disputes and pander to everyone. It was full of many companies, all of which who were competing and would stop each other as much as possible. That's why not many OpenGL updates were issued, but plenty of things became vendor specific extensions. Now I've heard that the board has been disolved and a single entity is taking the reigns. This explains why OpenGL has been picking up lately. No disputes, just progress.
For issue number 2, the Vista / OpenGL myth. You are partly correct, Aero will be disabled. Where you are wrong is that it will be disabled while you are using the OpenGL application. I have already tested this myself and it is no biggie. It is also somewhat expected, as OpenGL and Direct3D would fight for the hardware. They work fairly differently and if the OS cannot keep context you end up with missed renders/glitches/etc.
Vista (Apple + Linux) (Score:3, Informative)
Nice rant, but I think Microsoft is far from crashing and burning. Even if Vista becomes the new ME, they'll continue to own the lion's share of the marketplace. As bad as Vista may be, it already has a larger market share than Apple and Linux combined [hitslink.com].
Microsoft can afford to play the "long game" and dump cash into Vista until it either owns the market place or they come up with something else (which still contains the DRM and other trusted computing "feature" Microsoft needs to survive). No, the group that will suffer the most will be the software developers. Even the larger game houses (like EA) can't afford to have their market split like this (part of the reason for more console and casual game titles).