zarx said:
Just to clarify something for you APIs are used for programing just about everything including console games, they are not a bad thing and make development much easier as you don't have to program directly to the hardware which is insanely time consuming. The fact that developers had to develop their own APIs for the Cell is the main reason for the low quality of many ports on the PS3 and one of the most lauded features of the 360 by developers is the robust and low level direct X like APIs which make development easy. Sony seems to have learnt that not supplying APIs is a bad thing in the fact that one of the lauded features of the NGP is the fact that it has very low level and robust APIs. Now APIs will always be less flexible and incur a performance penalty than machine code programing but they make things so much easier that very few programmers would ever want to do away with them. Now the fact that Direct x and open GL have to work on a wide variety of hardware does restrict their performance more than specialised API but they are a necessary evil as they make code portable as well is improving stability. The quote you are basing this post off was taken out of context anyway the guy never suggested high level API like direct x should be eliminated entirely but he was suggesting some developers would like the opportunity to bypass them and directly access the hardware in certain situations. Even tho that would be very bad for PC gaming as you would have situations where supported cards would have a massive performance advantage over every non optimized card even if it was much more powerful. Leading to situations where a game sponsored by Nvidia for example could run flawlessly on certain cards and even if you had and ATI card that was much more powerful would not perform as well etc. The rapid advancement of hardware power compensates for that anyway and only lack of effort on the developers side is really holding back game visuals I mean just look at the graphics mods for Crysis they make Crysis look much better than Crysis 2 on PC.
if that is possible by a mod team for free with an old engine running on an old version of the DX API that is not as advanced as the latest version imagine what a full dev team could accomplish even with the limitations of high level API.
As for your "consoles are whats pushing the industry forward, not computer gaming" comment I think you need to look at the big picture, most of the most popular trends in console gaming today originated on PC, everything from online gaming, the FPS genre, the western style RPG, indie games, patches and add-on content for games etc. Now many of those things were changed to fit on consoles, things like add-on content went from $20-40 expansion packs that added entire new campaign sometime better than the ones in the original game to $15 3 map packs and costumes etc but they originated on PC. Many trends in gaming like multiple control options (optional move support in game etc on consoles,) user generated content (little big planet, mod nation racers, Infamous 2,) MMOs (starting to appear on consoles), alternative revenue channels (free to play MMOs with micro transitions are coming to consoles with free realms for PSN) and more. PC gaming is driving gaming forward more than console gaming I would say, tho the mobile and cloud spaces seems to be the fastest growing areas of gaming advancement, as Arcades (BTW you can find most of the genres tropes and design elements from gaming originated in the arcades) once were before the rise of consoles and PC gaming.
/Rant
TL:DR I R Smartr than thou Herp Derp |
you agree that say, directx is way more limiting than something on ps3? yes? its a very reasonable statement that the api used has multiple levels, a higher level which is likely for portability purposes and lower levels which developers probably use more often as higher level tend to have worse performance. i wasnt trying to say that the api is completely gone (lol), but rather that its not really used in the same way. developers can choose how deep they want to go, while on windows they use directx and while i wouldnt say its inefficient, i would say that comparing what your hardware could do and what developers can get out of it with all the layers of directx in the way? ya theres a big difference
anyways, ya i agree there have been more indie games and innovation on the computer platform but thats not what i was referring to. those things may have started on the computer, but they didnt start going mass media until the console. if there were no consoles today do you think there would have been 86 (wii) 52 (360) 49 ( ps3) = 187 million more gaming computers? i wasnt trying to say that gaming started on consoles, but the console is what makes all the high budget games a possiblity. publishers couldnt spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing multiple games at a time if the consoles didnt provide a big enough playerbase to buy all those different games
