Arkaign said:
Agreed. However, it's possible that many launch-era XB1 titles didn't take great advantage of the already low-level API offered in the final pre-launch XB1 dev kit, simply due to not having enough time. So we can think of those as sort of sloppy ports to the hardware, as fast as possible, just to meet deadlines. While DX11 vs. DX12 won't make much difference on XB1, what will make a fairly decent positive difference is a dev starting work on a title with final hardware in hand, working through it through the entire process, having all of the optimizations testable with final hardware at any point along the way, etc. Improved tools in the new SDK should help as well. As opposed to how the launch titles were made, which was something like : here's a high end PC, and 'target' specs, now go make a game, we'll come back to you when the final hardware is ready and work with you in getting it ported to final hardware. IOW, a port vs. a natively written game from start to finish on a mature SDK and known hardware specs. And of course, all of this would have been the same had there not even been a DX12 XB1 announcement. DX12 is not that meaningful for XB1 at all. But yeah, for PC it's a huge deal, as DX11 on PC did not in any way allow for low-level API draw call optimization, which is the 9,000lb monster that holds GPUs back. |
Agreed, great post.
The main thing I'm seeing from DX12 that will probably actually help the Xbox One quite a bit, is it appears to make porting between X1 and PC much easier. Porting Forza 5 to PC using only 4 man months is pretty astounding. Especially taking into account they ported it to a PC using an Nvidia card while the X1 utilizes AMD.
This could be a pretty big deal and make multi-plat games much better than they have been at launch. People thinking DX12 is this "secret sauce" that will suddenly make the Xbox One the most powerful thing ever are mistaken, but I do think you will start to see some tangible improvements in games.
