DirectX Architect — Consoles as We Know Them Are Gone

ThinSkin writes "DirectX architect Alex St. John swims against the current and predicts the demise not of PC gaming, but of game consoles, in an exclusive two-part interview at ExtremeTech. In part one, Alex blasts Intel for pushing its inferior onboard graphics technology to OEMs, insists that fighting piracy is the main reason for the existence of gaming consoles, and explains how the convergence of the GPU and the CPU is the next big thing in gaming. Alex continues in part two with more thoughts on retail and 3D games, and discusses in detail why he feels 'Vista blows' and what's to become of DirectX 10."

Re:Go figure...

[Naughty Bob]

DirectX architect Alex St. John swims against the current...

He is clearly making his way back to his birthplace, in order to spawn.

His mind is clearly a-buzz with hormones, let's not be too cruel.

infinium phantom

[fred fleenblat]

That worked out well.

Re:Why Microsoft Dislikes Intel Graphics

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mistake is in thinking Bruce read the article, or cared. He saw "Microsoft" and hit reply.

Re:For games....

[BlueCollarCamel]

This your first time to Slashdot?

ENLARGE YOUR PENIS WITH GILLETTE VENUS

[tepples]

What good is it for a hacker to 0wn your PS3?

Brickers. The new consoles have firmware that updates itself over the Internet. A computer vandal could corrupt the firmware so that the console no longer shows its system menu.

But that's not nearly as profitable as spam. Lots and lots of spam. The consoles of the PS3 generation do a lot more on standby than the previous consoles did. Nintendo even advertises its "WiiConnect24" as a feature of its Wii console: games can install channels that update themselves while the console is sleeping. What if all those sleeping consoles were sending unsolicited advertisements?

Re:That's great, but this isn't a hardware problem

[sltd]

It's also true that for the price of a microwave, I can get a nice laptop, that connects to the internet and all that. But it kinda sucks at heating food, doesn't it?

I just put 4 Gigs of RAM in my laptop, so it heats up food just fine, thank you very much.

Re:For games....

[CronoCloud]

I have a dream that my children will one day live in a message board where they will not be judged by the length of their userid but by the content of their character.

You must be new here.

Re:input devices or online community

[CronoCloud]

Why do you think anybody might have an idea of when that might happen?

Re:As long as pcs have free online play and user m

[CronoCloud]

Oh good, you made the point I was going to make, I heart Linux on video game consoles. Yeah I said "I heart" on Slashdot.

Re:That's great, but this isn't a hardware problem

[CronoCloud]

You don't even need some of those. A standard keyboard has over 100 keys and replaces gamepads. Then the mouse replaces joysticks and, again gamepads.

ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh you must be joking, or else not old enough to remember the old days.

There was a time when computers were expensive and not everyone was guaranteed to have a joystick. So devs put in keyboard controls...in action games. Which sucked, and even if you could control the game with a keyboard it wasn't optimal, or fun, or comfortable.

Now you might have a mouse for analog aiming, but what about analog movement. console controllers have two analog sticks, plus analog buttons. And these days they also have USB and bluetooth, for things like mice and keyboards.

By the way, most PS1 and PS2 games allow fully configurable controls. Was that an Xbox you were making an example of with that "B button"

Re:Consoles...

[Hal_Porter]

Maybe, like me, he chooses to use a classic Stalin 9 inch TV from Albania. It has much, much more saturated colours than a capitalist TV and still uses valves to improve audio quality. It got 105% in Albania Multimedia Magazines 1958 Colour TV grouptest. However because of a conspiracy Western made video consoles don't support the Hoxha2 colour standard, only the far inferior NTSC or PAL. So all my games are in black and white.

Re:Great explanation!

[Hal_Porter]

they knew I was Bruce

This would be funnier if you said "they knew I was The Bruce"

Re:Great explanation!

[Bruce Perens]

If I ever took myself that seriously, people would be calling me something starting with "The", but not ending with "Bruce". :-)

That's true, but...

[raehl]

To be sincere, it may seem you just described a mac.

I've also just described my refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker, and vacuum cleaner, but you can't play games on those either.

(duck)