Really Potato? You're making claims that you work in video game design? I don't buy it, not after everything you've said, especially after you talking the way you do about this subject.

Ignoring an example like PC video game development, which is a much more complicated example of the very thing that Nintendo are rumored to be doing.
I know exactly what I'm talking about and I don't have to make outlandish claims of having dealings with any of the platform holders, if you're going to do something like that, then I think you should provide actual evidence of your claims.

The fact you use Vita, PS4 and try to use them as an example of something similar to this is hilarious, it's completely irrelevant. These are platforms designed separately, not made to be one platform, with a unified ecosystem, they released 2 years apart from each other and were never made to be part of one whole.
Deal with this issue, actually explain how it's in anyway similar to what NX is rumored to be.

The fact that PC can have both a stationary, big powerful home platform and a significantly weaker, laptop based, mobile device and a game can run across both or many other hardware configurations proves that you don't need to port to all of those devices, the games just run, because hardware vendors support them, just as Nintendo would.
You act like Nintendo aren't capable of even making games (since you say it's really impossible for them to make the tools to do so), yet they've been doing so for decades, before Sony or Microsoft got into the console space.
Companies can learn from mistakes, there are plenty of examples of that being the case, in multiple industries.

As for open source software, in the case of Vulkan developers only need to contact the Khronos Group for permission to use it in a capacity for profit, it says this on the Khronos website. Being a contributor would require full access to the code base, because any modifications to such a fundamental tool would greatly effect the whole platform, not even just the games they make.

You show yourself up with your comments and everyone's supposed to buy everything you say and your crazy claims that you have had dealings with this very subject in relation to everyone within the console games industry LOL, I've heard everything!

I don't care if you believe me or not. I have my name published in games for PS2, PS3, PS4, X360, X1, PSV, NDS, Wii, iOS and Android. That's a fact. You're incredulity is irrelevant. And of course, you know I can't prove this without opening myself up to DDOS attacks, so you're just going to have to take my word for it or not. My first game was working for Electronic Arts around the time the PS3 came out, and I've bounced around the industry to a few different studios since then, some of them first part, some of them third part, some indie. That's my story.

The more and more and more you going the more obvious it is that you actually do not really know what you're talking about. You have your finger on the pulse of what is going on in the game development industry, but you've never been a part of it. You might have dabbled in game development, but you haven't actuallly been a part of anything substantial. If I were to guess I'd say you're in university doing a CS or Computer engineering degree, or you're fresh out of university. You've never actually used any of Khronos' products (hey I haven't either), yet you have the audacity to claim this product will fit Nintendo's needs without actually knowing what Nintendo's needs are. You have absolutely no right to make that claim. As I've said, if you think since it's theoretically possible then Nintendo can easily do it. You are way oversimplifying it, and you just can't see why.

Nope. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

And the PSV and PS4 were not developed seperately. They were very much developed with each other in mind. They were originally designed to be far more integrated than they currently are, but they hey, life happened, technical challeneges arose,  budgets and time became a factor, and things had to be scaled back. This is what happens in the real world. Things can look great on the drawing board, but they have to be executed. You could quite literally be having the exact same conversation with me a few months before the vita was unveiled arguing the exact same points about why the PSV and PS4 should have near identical architecture and a near idential OS and how easy it would be for developers to make games for both if they did this. Heck there were rumors swriling about it around that time as well. You don't even realize the similarities of the two situations. Yet here we are with the PSV and the PS4 as they stand today. Didn't really go as a lot of people thought it would, did it?

I have every right to question Nintendo's execution in the hardware realm based on my experience with them. Don't believe me? Fine. That's your right. But as I said, when the NX is unveiled to the world, you might have a great big piece of humble pie to choke down. Be prepared.

Of course you care, otherwise you would never have made the claims you have. You want people to think you've made video games, because you think it will make you seem credible, it doesn't when you comment on this subject the way that you do. It always makes me laugh in these kinds of discussions when people scream loudly that they don't care what people think, yet they talk about things and bash their hands against the wall because someone's caught them out, acting like they have no interesting in proving themselves, they really don't need to LOL.

Really you're seeking approval.

Opening yourself up to DDOS attacks? LOL you're not a server, your a person (I think ;) ). You're basically not willing to show proof, because you don't have it, you've proven that you aren't what you claim to me with your comments. I don't have to take your word for it, because I understand the subject and I can see through your claims, I understand them for what they are. Anyone on these forums can make any claims they like, but if you really had the experience you claim to then it would be clear that was the case.

How ironic, it's funny that's actually the case with you.

Vulkan would fit all developer's use, unless they're a part of a company that has made their own low level API, with the ability for all CPU Cores to talk to any part of the GPU as and when a programmer needs it to. I have every right to state that Vulkan would be this, because that's exactly what it is LOL.

LMFAO yes they were. Vita was always designed to be a standalone device from PS4 or from any home console Sony were planning or using at the time of it's development. Remote play is as interated as it was going to be.

Vita was somewhat of a template for a simpler hardware architecture than past Sony Platforms and Sony tested that with Vita's design, but those are the only ways that PS4 and Vita connect. Once again you're inventing something that doesn't exist, to try and prove your points. You're trying to make this seem like real evidence, when it's nothing but invention on your part.

My bad. I of course I mean't Doxxing, not DDOS.

Doesn't change the fact that I'm a video game developer. It's fine if you don't believe me. If a mod wants to message me just to confirm it I would be open to that. Maybe I can get a little banner that says "console game developer" over my avatar so people like you wouldn't even have any actual grounds to question it. But something tells me even that wouldn't get you to believe me. But again, that's fine. I'm not exactly going to lose sleep over it.

Don't believe me about the vita. That's cool. I bet you didn't know that Mark Cerny was the lead architect on both. But I suppose that was just a coincidence and there's no way he was developing both simultaneously. Don't take my word for it.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-mark-cerny-lead-architect-playstation-vita

""With both pieces of Sony hardware developed in parallel, Mark Cerny and Shuhei Yoshida aimed to tie the hardware together".

Oops.

"The complex, custom hardware designs pioneered in the Ken Kutaragi era - powerful in application, but difficult to work with - were jettisoned in favour of licensed parts, with SCE's focus geared towards customisations with console game creation in mind, along with creating best-in-class development tools."

Sound familiar?

Like I said, they were planned to be far more integrated than they ended up being. Those are the facts. As it turns out, real life gets in the way of what is theoretically possible.


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So I'll say it again. We're done here. I can back up everything I've said. You're got ideas on what you think should work. There's nothing further to discuss.

I clearly don't have any background in any type of software development so I can't really claim which one of you is right, but I do have a couple questions for you.

Vita released in 2011 so I would assume the majority of R&D for it came around 2007-2009. With NX likely to release in 2016 or 2017, that would likely mean primary R&D for it occurred about 5 years after Vita, wouldn't that be correct to assume? Isn't it also true that mobile technology has come a long way in those 5 years?

If those things are all in fact true, than isn't it possible that the tech wasn't there yet for Sony to truly fulfill their original vision for Vita/PS4 but it's possible for Nintendo to effectively execute such a strategy due to the massive gains in mobile tech in those 5 or so years?

PC games have trouble because of that but above all, have MINIMUN requirements. Those min specs, when compared to the ones needed for max settings, have a much smaller difference than a handheld and home console. If you want a handheld version of a game made with home console hardware, you need to downgrade it.

Technology has come a long way in five years, this is true. But as JustBeingReal has pointed out, the concept in as of itself is a rather old one. PC games have been doing this for years. But like with every design ever made in the history of mankind, there are trade offs in doing so. Those trade offs still exist. Now while it true that gains have been made in terms of making APIs more capable and more lightweight than ever before, many of those same principals can be applied to the APIs used in console game development making console-style APIs still much better suited for consoles. A broader API that is made to encompass multiple processors, memory allocations etc will always be more bloated, slower, more obtrusive, and more resource hungry then simply hardcoding variables for one specific hardware specification, and the differences between the two are still substantial even to this day.

Another point, this technology is already used in multi-platform engines developed for the PS4 and Xbox One. Sure the operating systems and APIs for those devices are different, but coding the engine (which is in a lot of ways a high-level API, along with a lot of other things) that communicates directly with these APIs and OSs still needs to be made as capable and as resource-lite as possible. Yet what do we still see from developers? Time and time again, first party exclusive games consitently look better and perform better than multi-platform games, and I don't see that gap shrinking, do you? That's not just due to the spreading of resources over mutliple platforms, it's due to the simple fact that developing an engine that only has to deal with one API, one OS, one hardware spec gives makes the engine smaller and more efficient, leading to significant performance gains. It's the same concept, just applied literally one level higher.

But let's move on from APIs, as they are just one part of it. Let's discuss infrastructure. It's one thing to say "you can create development suite which will allow developers to simply just scale the settings up and down and it "just work" because it's all basically the same hardware". Well it's not exactly the same, and it's not that simple. It would be like saying "i have these two rockets, one 1/2 the size of the other, and I want them to land 100 yards away from each other on the moon, so I'll just make a big panel with a button on it that says 'launch big rocket' and another button that says "launch little rocket" and there you go! Two rockets on the moon". People have to put a lot of work into developing the underlying infracstructure to those two rockets to launch correctly, and land them exactly where you intend on landing, and as it turns out the little rocket's fuel tanks aren't big enough to get it to the moon, and the big rocket won't fit right on the same launch pad. But, it's just a couple buttons, right?

Now I'm not calling video games rocket science, but making the infrastructure that would allow developers to develop, compile, and test games on two similar but different hardware specifications, with two different screen resolutions, and two similar but differnent everything else and making it so even a few hundred settings can be tweaked and a "just work" on these two similar but differernt hardware specs is an epicly huge undertaking, and a lot more complicated than making two sepearate developer kits for two similar, but separate devices, and just letting developers make what they want for each hardware spec.



M mainy point of contention is this -  If there really is that insigificant of a difference between console-APIs and PC counterparts, then even in 2007-2009 Sony had all the means of making an API that was "slightly less efficient" than the one they created for the PSV and PS4, and develop tools to make that porting games from the PS4 to the Vita a much simpler process than it actually is.  When it comes to development kits, development tools and support, in my experience Sony is marginally better than Microsoft and Nintendo is a very distant third. The developers kit and developer tools for the PSV when it came out were industry leading.  Also, there's no reason why Sony couldn't have leveraged new techology over the PSV's life to make APIs and new OSs for the Vita to do just that. But they haven't. Maybe they have in the years since I worked on that port (I haven't worked on a Vita game since) but still, the OS is more or less the same, and from what others have told me, it's still no walk in the park to port a game to Vita. These two devices barely interact with each other even though they were developed at the same time, and lead by the same person, all the while Sony was (and still is) one of the industry leaders in the very technology  JustBeingReal believes Nintendo can leverage to do just that.

I really don't think Nintendo could pull that off. In fact, even if they could, I don't think it would be wise of them to do so.