By not supporting it on Xbox which is a walled garden. Since Xbox has a significant market share, they essentially force developers not to use Vulkan (and use DX12) if they want to target Xbox. Compare it to browser wars of the past. MS did the same thing exactly, and the only reason they magically started supporting shared Web standards is because they lost those wars. Today it's a real wonder - they even decided to support free video codecs in the browser (while Apple still refuses).
I'm failing to see how that sabotages Vulkan. As far as I know, Vulkan has only recently reached 1.0, and nVidia JUST started supporting it. Until recently, there was nothing to support.
Your entire complaint is that developers have to do more work if they want to support multiple platforms, which has always been the case. I don't recall the original Final Fantasy getting released on the Sega Genesis. There's never going to be a magical catch-all graphics API because technologies like Metal and DirectX take advantage of known hardware specs and OS features to make the games look good and run fast.
In order for cross platform solution to offer value of avoiding duplicate work, it should be really cross platform. MS prevents prevents it by not supporting it on Xbox.
> which has always been the case
Exactly because of such lock-in.
> technologies like Metal and DirectX take advantage of known hardware specs and OS features
Let's not try pretending that MS and Apple do it for any technical reasons. There are none.
I think you just blindly champion Vulkan, an unproven and not read for primetime technology.
The two largest platforms, MS and Apple have their own stacks, Metal and DX12. And they have been maintaining those from years, especially DX12 which comes from decades of DX development.
They should throw all this away (and lose any competitive advantage for their platform in the process) just because there's finally a competent new stack (that's not even ready yet)?
>Let's not try pretending that MS and Apple do it for any technical reasons. There are none.
Would wanting to offer the best possible experience for your platform, to control how and when any new feature is implemented according to your long term plans, and to not mess with lower-common-denominator cross-platform design-by-committee APIs counts as a "technical reason"?
Let's not pretend you ask for this for any technical reason. It's all about developer convenience at best.
> I think you just blindly champion Vulkan, an unproven and not read for primetime technology.
It's the only cross platform solution. So yes, it should be pushed forward to make it work. It's not a "blind" push - it's the only reasonable thing out there. Neither Metal nor DX12 plan to do anything comparable. Petty greed of Apple and MS prevents them.
Graphics APis should be common. Not making them common is about petty greed. Control of the platform here is done for the sole reason of making cross platform development harder. I.e. hindering competition.
You're asserting that DirectX was developed as a competing API to OpenGL and a lock-in mechanism to hinder competition which is a ridiculous assertion that completely ignores history.
OpenGL started development in 1991 by Silicon Graphics and it's primary focus was on CAD/CAM utilizing expensive hardware accelerators. It was initially only available on IRIX and was never intended for video games. It was not open and the Architectural Review Board that maintained the API was controlled by Silicon Graphics.
Direct3D was developed by a company called RenderMorphics starting in 1992 and was bought by Microsoft in 1994. Direct3D was added to the DirectX suite in 1996 specifically for video game acceleration. At the time Microsoft was shipping their own OpenGL Drivers and would continue to do so until Windows 2000 was released.
Microsoft and Silicon Graphics actually attempted to unify the two APIs under Project Fahrenheit in 1997. Project Fahrenheit consisted of low, medium and high end drivers with Microsoft providing the low-end and Silicon Graphics providing the mid and high end portions. Microsoft abandoned the effort in 1999 because DirectX adoption had taken off and they were focusing resources on the original Xbox console. Silicon Graphics was in financial trouble at the point and it no longer made sense to pursue a project heavily reliant on them.
Silicon Graphics trouble's were reflected in the stagnation of OpenGL development with only incremental releases up to version 1.5 in 2003. SGI would eventually go under and the API would get turned over the Khronos in 2005 but it wasn't until 3DLABS got involved that anything happened and it wasn't until 2007 that OpenGL 2.0 was released. At the point the Xbox 360 has been out for 2 years and Microsoft was heavily invested in DirectX.
What you are asking for may become a reality, but Vulkan is not something that any reasonable primetime product should have even considered trying to support until what, like... was it 2 months ago now or not yet?
The XBox is not a tech test platform. Neither are the mobile handsets.
Claiming this reality amounts to "sabotage" is somewhat absurd.
I could use that exact logic to point to many other disingenuous working groups and say Vulkan is an attempt to create a new lock-in scheme under the guise of an open technology.
It wouldn't be the first time. "Learn from history."
How exactly is it lock-in if unlike MS it's cross platform and cross hardware? Just saying "it's the same logic" doesn't make it the same when it contradicts the facts.
Being cross platform and cross hardware isn't contradictory to lock-in.
Lock-in is about whether, after adopting technology X, it takes substantial effort to go to an alternative technology Y -- not about whether you can take X with you in a different platform/hardware.
>In order for cross platform solution to offer value of avoiding duplicate work, it should be really cross platform. MS prevents prevents it by not supporting it on Xbox.
Vulkan doesn't need to be cross platform because there are tools like Unity which abstract away the graphics API and let developers target a number of platforms.
However, you are lodging a complaint against Microsoft that has been the case for every console device since the first ones were released. However, that being said, not supporting Vulkan on the XBox harms Microsoft more than Vulkan since all that means is some games will not be available on the XBox. Just like there are XBox games that are not available on the PS4, the PC, or the Wii U. There's nothing Microsoft is doing that's out of line with the rest of the console makers. It's the console industry in general.
> Vulkan doesn't need to be cross platform because there are tools like Unity which abstract away the graphics API and let developers target a number of platforms.
Unity developers will be doing that double work in such case. And not everyone is using third party engines anyway. Don't think that if something is abstracted, it somehow magically happens for free.
By not supporting it on Xbox which is a walled garden. Since Xbox has a significant market share, they essentially force developers not to use Vulkan (and use DX12) if they want to target Xbox. Compare it to browser wars of the past. MS did the same thing exactly, and the only reason they magically started supporting shared Web standards is because they lost those wars. Today it's a real wonder - they even decided to support free video codecs in the browser (while Apple still refuses).