Is the Xbox 360 a Success?

[Pemalite]

mjk45 said:

Where did I put words in your mouth ? , I stated that you are treating software as if it was the hardware and that's my opinion it's not putting words in your mouth , yes what you said would hold some water if they all used direct x   but I would be arguing the same if the roles where reversed , it doesn't come down to MS 's part in the evolution of DX  and through it's domination it's use in GPU tech in general,but the assumption that  Sony is beholden to it just because they use a custom card based off one with dx capabilities , it's a chain with so many links that you can find an argument that just about every player who made an impact in the industry is beholden to the other , whether it be through pioneering work or taking something that someone else did and making it popular , look I'm not trying to downgrade MS or DX both are great ,it's just that I think it is a long bow to draw , so has happens in most disagreements when both sides mind are concrete , we will have to agree to disagree , still It was a nice argument that I enjoyed ,cheers.

I'm not treating software as hardware, what I am saying and you seem to continue to miss the point is that the software is influencing the hardware.

The other point is... The PS3 doesn't have to use direct X, all the features of the GPU are open via OpenGL (Which is an Open source API), but the feature set and the design of the GPU was designed with Direct X as the priority as that is what the majority of games on Windows which the GPU was designed for, uses.

I think you are making the mistake thinking the PS3's GPU is unique and only found on the PS3 when in fact it's a Geforce 7 chip and designed for the PC and Microsoft Windows and thus Direct X. - It's not a custom designed GPU at all, the Xbox is more "custom" than the PS3 in that it's GPU is based on a Hybrid design of the Radeon x18xx series and the Radeon HD 2000 series.

Lets go back a bit farther. During the era of Direct X 7 and TnL.
Back then ATI was pushing Microsoft for programmable pixel shaders, the pixel shaders in the Radeon 7000 series was actually rather flexible and powerfull, however nVidia stuck to the Direct X 7 specification with the Geforce 2.
Microsoft ended up inventing HLSL or High Level Shader Language and Shader Model 1, this was incompatible with ATI's implementation and it was the implementation that nVidia ended up picking up in the Geforce 3 and AMD jumped ahead a little with the Radeon 8500.
So, Microsoft helped influence Pixel Shading in todays graphics chips, that even the PS3 uses.

Then you have ATI's Truform technology, it origionally debuted in the Radeon 8500 series with a refinement in the Radeon 9000 series, essentially...
This was Tessellation at the earliest using N-Patches to determine where to Tessellate, for years ATI pushed for the inclusion of this technology into
Direct X, but it would still take 7+ years for it to be included in Direct X, but then Direct X's implementation was completely incompatible with ATI's.
nVidia however went with Quintic-RT patches which was incompatible with ATI and Direct X's implementation.
Direct X changed, improved and standardised the approaches both company's took when it came to Tessellation, the PC ultimatly benefitted greatly and will be technology the next consoles will be able to use.

So far you haven't really given any technical merits on why Direct X even after decades of influencing hardware choices hasn't played a part in the design of the Direct X 9 graphics chip in the PS3. Just the answer of. "No it hasn't."

Some reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Level_Shader_Language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truform
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintic