Microsoft’s DirectX 12 was recently showcased at this year’s BUILD conference. A recent article on Neowin saw founder and CEO of Stardock Brad Wardell talk about how it was a game changer for the Xbox One, with the claim that it would help double the speed of the next gen console’s GPU.

Wardell himself took to Twitter to clarify his statement of DX12 giving “every Xbox One owner a new GPU that is twice as fast as the old one”. “It’s not literally (it’s software, not hardware) but yes, dx12 games will likely by more than 2x as fast.”

Other industry professionals were much more skeptical though. Rich Forster, programmer on SCE’s R&D PhyreEngine team, stated that, “Well that made me smile: http://www.neowin.net/news/directx-12-a-game-changer-for-xbox-one … DX12 will push GPUs twice as hard leading to overheating.”

PS4 ICE Team programmer Cort Stratton added that, “New SDKs can significantly improve performance on the same hardware, yes. Dunno about DX12/X1 specifically, of course; not my dept.

He also said that people have a right to be skeptical about performance gains. “Good; always be suspicious of ANY perf. improvement claims. e.g. what *exactly* got 50-100% faster? Faster than what? Details!”

Treyarch software engineer Dan Olson had a less amused take. “Here’s an article… no idea why people go on record for stuff like this. http://www.neowin.net/news/directx-12-a-game-changer-for-xbox-one”

Programmer Dean Ashton found it downright hilarious. Either that or life-threatening judging by his response. “2x perf on Xbox One when using DX12? That article nearly made me choke on my cup of tea.”

Software developer for .NET and Windows Phone Kévin Gosse said, “RyuJIT/SIMD, DX12, Mantle…Moving back to lower abstraction levels. Programming is about rediscovering the same principles again and again!”

It’s perhaps Billy O’Neal’s response that is most telling, seeing as he is a C# and C++ developer at Microsoft. “Both major consoles have a large number of weak sauce CPU cores. Hence the motivation to optimize that case.” Would any one from the company really go on record and say that?

Regardless, it’s obvious that there’s a large amount of skepticism about DirectX 12 and the performance gains it can offer for the Xbox One. DirectX 12 will be available in the 2015 holiday season. What are your thoughts on the API and its performance gain claims? Let us know in the comments.

Gordon Walton, an industry veteran, has criticised the current way of how publishers handle contracts with developers.

“A shocking thing about our business is how little attention and value is put on coherent teams,” he told GamesIndustry. “At a certain level of abstraction at almost all game companies, there’s almost no appreciation at all for the team dynamic. ‘They’re just replaceable meat puppets,’ and that’s never, ever true.”

“They regularly destroy really good functioning teams and then remake them with all the inherent risks that come from remaking a team. Even people who’ve advanced in the game business to the higher levels, who actually know that shit, seem to forget it. It always shocks me. If there was a Making Game Companies For Dummies book, that should be the core of it – how important coherent teams are.”

The entire interview is a really fascinating read so go and check it out. It’s nice that people can come out and openly criticize without any fear, and it kind of shows that free speech reigns supreme in the Internet as well.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

We earlier posted news about how Valve is organizing a DOTA 2 tournament with $1 million prize money up for grabs for the winner. Now Valve has begun distributing DOTA 2’s keys to developers who support Steam really well.

This news came to light from the Magicka developer who let out this information on Twitter. This is what he posted.

“Work is slowly grinding to a halt as the DOTA2 beta keys are distributed around the office.”

Gamers don’t have to wait too long to get their hands on the game as Valve is planning a large scale Beta test this fall.

We try not to listen to the critics too much. Most of the criticisms have come because the first half of the game is very linear,” producer Yoshinori Kitase told Xbox World 360 (via CVG). “But we’ve got a story to tell, and it’s important the player can engage with the characters and the world they inhabit before letting them loose…”

Game director Motomu Toriyama also said: “We think many reviewers are looking at Final Fantasy XIII from a western point of view. When you look at most western RPGs, they just dump you in a big open world, and let you do whatever you like… [It] becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when you’re given that much freedom.”

So far reviews have been mixed, ranging from 70% to 90%.  This contrast heavily with the 39/40 score awarded by Japanese magazine Famitsu.

Final Fantasy XIII releases March 9th.

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