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DarkTemplar on 01 June 2012
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Adinnieken said:
DarkTemplar said:
Well I after reading it I will speculate a couple of things that could make the NextBox easy to develop compared to the Wii U:

1) It will have its architecture really close to a PC.
2) It will have a traditional controller (without a touchscreen).

No, what makes the next Xbox easier to develop on is .Net.

.Net is designed to remove the developer from the hardware, providing them with a simple and consistent interface to hardware, regardless of what the hardware is.  When new functionality to the hardware is added or the capabilities expanded, the only requirement is learning the new features.  You don't have to relearn how to develop your game just to move it from one platform to the next.  Everything developers learned to develop a game on the Xbox 360 will be applicable on the next Xbox.  They can code it for the Xbox 360 and the next Xbox, and when they compile it, they'll get two separate builds.  One for each platform.  It makes developing super simple.

Compare that to the PS3 and PS4, and Wii and Wii U, where developers talk to the hardware directly and will have to relearn APIs (libraries) from one platform to the next, relearning how to develop for each new platform.  They won't be able to share code.  They'll have to develop for each platform, where as (again) on the Xbox 360 and next Xbox they will be able to share code between games for both platforms.

What is easier?  To write game code once, then tweak for each platform, or write code for each platform?  If developers can write once and tweak the code for a different platform they will gladly do it, and with .Net, the Xbox 360 and next Xbox they can.

Are you a programmer? (For me you seem to understand very well how .net works)

I have been programming in .net for years and I have also experience in gaming programing with .net. I remember when MS anounnced .net for XBox360 and they said basically everithing you sumarized above. I was in the middle of my graduation at that time and I started to study a lot about it with my colleagues. So what you just wrote was suposed to happen this gen.

However C and C++ (and Lua for scripting) are stil the industry patterns even for the XBox360. Why?  .net is still slow compared to C and C++ so demanding games cannot use it yet. Also most of the modern engines (like the Unreal Engine) provide those features that you said and many others. Currently game development is at a level where the language of the code generated by an engine is almost irrelevant.

But of course MS can try some sort of trick to make .net the most used language in the NextBox so lets wait and see!