The wording in that press release sounds almost exactly what AMD has been saying about Mantle since it was announced. It's uncanny.
Since I'm finding the rapid fire repetition of the same sentiment incredibly frustrating, I'll try and say this once and retire.
The reason that this sounds a lot like Mantle presentations, and Mantle in turn sounds almost exactly like presentations about lowering overhead in OpenGL from last year, and from Steam and....so on and so on is because it isn't a new idea, and not a really revolutionary one.
This is also the same reason that AMD can run around and say that people had been asking them for something like Mantle, and Microsoft can say that they've been working on DX 12 for years, and Microsoft can say that they have been trying to roll out some of the DX 11.x optimizations from XBOX to PC, and Valve can say that they've been working on OpenGL rendering due to advantages...etc.
It's because it's a pretty well known sentiment that developers with high skill sets have known that they could do more and better if there was less overhead impacting their rendering, and if they could implement things like compute, sound, and AI in a more smoothly managed environment. Everyone agrees on this, has wanted it, and will be helped by it. It's just that, due to the console hardware anchoring development for AAA titles so low for so long, the energy to fight against inertia hasn't fully gained critical mass until recently.
That, and frankly, the aggressive marketing campaign that managed to convince a huge number of people that there was something massively wrong with DX over night. Now I'm not saying that there aren't inefficiencies inherent in the system, but from what I've understood that's been relatively well documented for years, ... but suddenly, in the face of an alternative, it's become a CRISIS!!!!. Microsoft is conspiring to limit people's speed!!!
API's will be better optimized for multi-threading, bi-directional compute, lower overhead, more aggressive memory management...etc going forward. That's just the way it is. Hopefully, we'll get to a point where, once again, people can find a balance where whatever API they are using will offer a good balance of raw power and ease of use so that the majority of people can have a common gaming experience without having to resort to game specific autoexec files to boot everytime they want to play.
And hopefully people can cool out and pray that the ride to that point doesn't involve even more fractious infighting and finger pointing than has already gone on with regard to the beginnings of this movement.