- Nov 14, 2011
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It's fascinating that people are still setting up DirectX 12 vs Vulkan as if it was some sort of NVidia vs. AMD battle. Vulkan may have come from AMD originally, but it could have massive benefits for NVidia.
NVidia has been trying unsuccessfully for years to push hardcore, PC-level gaming on to mobile chips. They have helped Epic to push out ports of Unreal engine generation after generation, but the only big name PC games to have been ported are ones which NVidia sponsored (Portal 2, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel). Why? Because almost nobody uses OpenGL on Windows. Porting to Android almost universally means porting the game from DirectX to OpenGL. And the dearth of good PC-quality games on Android makes it very difficult to justify buying a Tegra powered gaming device.
If Vulkan gains popularity among PC developers and is available on Android, then ports to Android will become significantly cheaper and easier to make. The business case for doing it will be easier to make, and we would see a much higher number of Windows games ported to Android. I fully expect that NVidia will be pushing its favourite developers (the usual TWIMTBP crowd like Ubisoft, and of course Epic) to use Vulkan for their PC games, so that they can easily port it to Android and provide one more reason to buy a Tegra device.
What do you all think? Will the next wave of TWIMTBP games run on Vulkan, or DX12?
NVidia has been trying unsuccessfully for years to push hardcore, PC-level gaming on to mobile chips. They have helped Epic to push out ports of Unreal engine generation after generation, but the only big name PC games to have been ported are ones which NVidia sponsored (Portal 2, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel). Why? Because almost nobody uses OpenGL on Windows. Porting to Android almost universally means porting the game from DirectX to OpenGL. And the dearth of good PC-quality games on Android makes it very difficult to justify buying a Tegra powered gaming device.
If Vulkan gains popularity among PC developers and is available on Android, then ports to Android will become significantly cheaper and easier to make. The business case for doing it will be easier to make, and we would see a much higher number of Windows games ported to Android. I fully expect that NVidia will be pushing its favourite developers (the usual TWIMTBP crowd like Ubisoft, and of course Epic) to use Vulkan for their PC games, so that they can easily port it to Android and provide one more reason to buy a Tegra device.
What do you all think? Will the next wave of TWIMTBP games run on Vulkan, or DX12?