The reason I say 90% use windows is because that means 90% of PC's have access to DirectX. It still isn't any difference than it ever has been. So right away you talking about one Development platform/API that 90% of the PC market has access to. Scorpio then adds to that. The Xbone like the original PS4 doesn't have room for API overhead, the PS4 due to it's OS not being windows based has games written specifically for the hardware, the Xbone, again not having room is also pretty much written to metal with some DX handles to fit OS requirements. Scorpio basically takes its 2013 mid level graphics and archaic netbook cores, and makes it a 2017 mid level desktop APU. Meaning it's not going to give a Titan set up a run for it's money, but it's got room to take a PC developed game, port it over and optimize it for the Scorpio hardware. I think it's more likely that Scorpio supported games will actually be from the PC development tree and not the PS4/Xbone tree. The PS4 Pro just being a faster refresh of the original APU in the previous version, will just get a PS4/Xbone release optimized for the faster performance. In the end for the Scorpio will be easier to write for by taking a DX12 port of whatever development platform they are using and optimizing it, instead of having to have a PS4/Xbone/PS4Pro metal, a Scorpio Metal/DX, and a PC Vulkan release.
id is the only company I know of that has ever sat back on it's engine and developed it for non-DX setup from the beginning and id Tech 4 they still were forced to throw in DX support. While it's great to see more industry wide support for Vulcan, I doubt that it gets as much penetration as you would hope considering it would require yet a another code break from the consoles, including Scorpio that would without Vulcan be able to use a DX port with optimization. So they could either design for the Xbone/PS4/Pro and then work with a DX package for PC/Scorpio. One require 3 development paths and the other 2. Then you add the fact that they aren't going to just do DX11/Vulcan. What most will do till DX11 is dead is probably DX11, DX12, and Vulcan. Hedging their bets. What Vulcan needs to do is be head and shoulders better than DX. This is where AMD bites themselves in the ass. AMD has always tried to support any API equally, they kind of have to if they pulled what Nvidia has with DX12, it would just be yet another reason not to get an AMD GPU. Nvidia has always held DX and Microsoft in Contempt. They will work on the DX12 setup when the pressure is on but they have always been slow to optimize for DX and even actively pushed for OpenGL adoption in the past. If Nvidia competently supported DX12 and AMD gave it the shaft, then Nvidia would be the king in DX12 and when Vega came out it could do well in DX11 and Vulkan and DX12 would look like crap, Nvidia would still be the king of the mountain, and would use Vulkan to finally push MS off the mountain top on API's by continuing to optimize for Vulcan over DX12. Problem is if Vega is within even 10% of the 1080 non-ti in DX11 it will blow away a Titan in DX12. This will cause Nvidia to work on fixing DX12 performance. Which means both cards will be closer to being optimally optimized for DX12 which increases the hurdle a properly optimized Vulkan game implementation has to overcome. Once you add Scorpio on top of that you basically make it hard for me to see Vulcan making much of a push past the original marketing implementations. It's got to be noticeably better.
I have seen this story played out dozens of times going all the way back to DX6. Every other release someone tries to unseat it. This time there is a bigger chance than ever before. But scorpio becomes that last hurdle that I doubt Vulcan can overcome. If you are going to sell Scorpio games you are going to write for DX12 and if you are going to do DX12 for Scorpio, you are going to offer it on the PC version and AMD with Vega will force Nvidia to fix their DX12 performance, which will cause any potential gap in DX12 to Vulcan close a lot. Vulcan can still be better but will it be worth the development time.
Good points but even with that reasoning I'm not convinced that Vulkan would stay in minority in the future. Scorpio is one console yes, it can help Microsoft gain back its somewhat lame share (24mil vs PS4 50mil) of the current console war...or not. Also PS4 seems to get more and more pretty amazing exclusive games when the times go on. PS4 also started its VR game quite early and has sold already one million units and this will tie users even more to Sony's ecosystem. On VR there are already some nice PS4 VR exclusives like Resident Evil 7. Microsoft has also tarnished their reputation quite a bit when they tried to inroduce the restrictions for used games market etc. People don't tend to forget these type of things and it brings the question when MS is going to try something similar again. At the end of the day Scorpio will have quite a load on its shoulders when trying to shake PS4 dominance.
Some other points:
- As said above Microsoft has pretty bad reputation and for good reasons which times back for about two decades. Point is that you use MS solutions if you generally are forced to do that. Otherwise you use more open solutions if available. There is a reason why we have Linux/Unix based operation systems everywhere, IE browser share is ~10%, basically no MS on mobile market and Vulkan is one more alternative on this list. Would be interesting to see how much Windows share would decline if you could have similar gaming support on eg SteamOS with help of Vulkan instead of Windows tied DX. Linux is in many ways better OS but gaming has been its achilles heel.
- I don't recall there has ever been this much support and future plans to any other DX competing tech before. Big amount of high-end games tend to use some of the game engines mentioned before. It's just too expensive nowadays to do everything by yourself. That's why having those engines on Vulkan support list is not a small matter at all.
- Nintendo is one of the major players with its own hardware but also nowadays with games on mobile market. Developers on the new Switch (quite a hot start at least with 1,5 million units in a week) can choose Vulkan, OpenGL or OpenGL ES.
- Don't forget the mobile market. There are billions of mobile devices which are also used for gaming. Today's youngsters seems to spend significant amount of their time for mobile gaming. Because this and costs of mobile playing being so much less than on other platforms, this market segment will probably continue its growth. Also there are more and more cross-platform games spanning especially to the mobile devices like Fallout4 had it's own minigame before the actual game, WoW has it's own mobile remote app and all major game brands tend to have some mobile version too. There are already lots of knowledge on mobile gaming sector because it's so much easier/cheaper to establish a startup on this side. These developers now mainly use OpenGL but in future Vulkan. This will affect the attitude and magnitude of the used game APIs on the market. Point is that even you now write pure DX11/DX12 games you cannot ignore the rest of the gaming market. Games are all about brands and they don't bow to any specific platform. Companies owning these brands try to make as much profit of them as possible by spreading them everywhere. If there would be one common API, developers would choose it with wide grin.
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