
Why do game developers prefer Windows? - richardknop
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows/88055
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diegoperini
The longest answer there is from 2013. What is the status of the same
comparison (Direct3D vs OpenGL) right now? For a feature game with high-end
graphics and 60 fps performance on high resolution, which one is more feature
rich right now? Are there things one can do and the other cannot? For the
things they can both do, are there any catches?

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goalieca
Is vulkan going to take over? It would be nice to have a common low-level API
across all platforms (mobile,console,pc). I just wish Apple would support it
and deprecate metal (with continued support for next 5 years).

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vectorEQ
i dont think vulkan will take over, but implementations of this API might.
Vulkan is a bit to broad and complicated for direct replacement of DirectX,
but i think once people develop some wrappers / libraries against it it will
be immensly powerfull and easy to use (like directX has been). Projects like
GLFW have already integrated it, and i'd like to see that be developed further
to assist game developers in easily hooking into vulkan. Vulkan is very
different from the others, and it requires a bit more in-depth knowledge to
use than gl and directX as you are more directly managing resources, which was
taken care for you in much cases in gl and directX.

Another avenue which will make vulkan powerful is that it's incoprorated
already into a lot of popular engines, which makes it atleast easy to use for
users of these engines. (unreal, unity etc.)

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frik
At first there was the AMD Mantel API and the game engine devs of EA Dice
(Frostbite), from their experience Vulcan and the slightly different DirectX12
branched off. At the moment it seems Vulcan has more support than DirectX12.
(OpenGL and DirectX up to v11 were older higher level APIs.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_(API)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_\(API\))

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SAI_Peregrinus
If they're building the game for Windows (so not purely console) it's a lot
easier to be able to run the game on the development machine if that machine
is running Windows. If the dev machine runs Linux or OSX then either a reboot
is needed (no debugging allowed) or a compatibility layer/emulator is needed
(performance issues). Neither option works well. They could have a second test
machine running Windows, but that's much more complicated, takes up more desk
space, etc. It's generally much easier to write software on the target than it
is to write on another OS/architecture/etc and cross-build.

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cormacrelf
This was posted on HN yesterday
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903229)),
but there was more discussion on /r/programming:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6qrbeo/why_do_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6qrbeo/why_do_game_developers_prefer_windows/)

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delegate
I'm not a game developer, but I think one of the reasons is Visual C++ (Visual
Studio), which is still the best C++ IDE around.

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Vogtinator
And also the worst, from my experience. The good autocompletion isn't made up
by the incredible slowness and latency as you type.

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xir78
The reason I see as more simple, PCs were just more accessible due to cost and
were easy enough for players to use, Microsoft invested in the tech so they’d
perform well. So most gaming dev tech has a late 90s feel about it to this
day.

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lj3
> Microsoft invested in the tech so they’d perform well

This is the core of the reason. This extends beyond just the dev tooling they
created, though. It also includes partnering with NVidia and ATI to create the
best performing video drivers. Apple put a similar effort into making mobile
games easy to make and performant, which is why they are the dominant platform
in mobile gaming.

