Microsoft’s next iteration of its proprietary graphics API, DirectX 12 has been vastly praised for the improvements it will bring to PC and possibly Xbox One games development. But there is some uncertainty whether developers will adopt it for mass scale production for Xbox One games.
Aaron Pollack from Circle 5 Studios, who is currently working on Primal Carnage: Extinction has shared his thoughts on the potential of DirectX 12 with GamingBolt. He believes that the new iteration is exciting but the big question is whether developers will develop games using it, and while doing so will it mean that they need to take a calculated risk of not launching their game on the PS4, a console that has already sold over 20 million units?
“DirectX is always improving and it’s exciting to see how far it’s come. The biggest catch with it right now is the support fragmentation with PS4. There are around 20 million PS4s on the market right now and if a developer pursues DX they’re making a calculated decision to not release to that user base. Sure, there’s a lot of crossover in the userbase but it’s still a pretty big risk for a large scale production,” he said to GamingBolt.
He then goes to explain the benefits of the new API. “I think the new versions will bring a pretty good benefit provided that the companies like Epic and Unity take advantage of them and developers are willing to either split their visual pipelines or develop with exclusivity in mind. Of course, this issue isn’t just tied to Direct X. This is an issue for developing for a specific set piece of hardware too. If you look at the Uncharted series in the previous generation you can see just how much developers were able to squeeze out of the hardware.”
Pollack’s statements makes a lot of sense. Games development isn’t exactly cheaper and for a multiplatform game, it would require more work to support DX12 for the Xbox One version as well a different code structure for the PS4 version. This may give rise to cross platform code compatibility issues and other nuisances that come along with multiplatform games development. Whether it’s worth is something we cannot comment at the moment since Microsoft hasn’t revealed any Xbox One/DX12 benchmarks yet.
But we will know soon enough as DX12 is scheduled for a launch later this year.