XBone will not support Mantle or OpenGL

Booya. Direct from Microsoft!

Everyone and me who kept saying it makes no financial or technological sense for Microsoft to allow Mantle on XBone were right. Mantle is a step backwards to what XBone already has. The to the metal console development is superior to a low level API like Mantle and DX 11.2 features weren't made for PC really, though will benefit PC but were made for XBone to leverage more power for the weak AMD APU.

Seems those of us who were saying Microsoft will be using XBone and it's use of DX 11.2 to encourage PC Gamers to upgrade to Windows 8 were right. Since DX 11.2 features will not be available on Windows 7 and previous versions.
- Tile resources may allow us to see more detail and more data than any game previously. And it won't be available on Android, iOS, or any API other than DX 11.2 on XBone and Windows 8.1. Sounds like a great reason to update to Windows 8 to me if you are a PC gamer.

Haha. Slap to the face at AMD. It's hilarious. It's gold. It's tech comedy at it's best.

Oh and it's likely Sony won't support Mantle either. ROFL.

 

Why is this good news? It just means some developers will either have to choose a platform or sacrifice budget to cut out features to program for multiple platforms. Commonizing API as much as possible is better for everyone. This is dumb and yet another boneheaded move by Microsoft.

 

Not to me. Having Mantle is boneheaded. I don't use AMD GPU and nor will I ever again. Sorry, not interested in some stupid AMD API. Good riddance.

I'd rather have DX 11.2 features being improved to get more juice out of my Intel/Nvidia hardware than some AMD mantle crap that only support a few GCN2 hardware.

As for developers choosing, that's crap. And you know it. Most engines that are used today are not just cross-platform with consoles and PC, but also with Android and more. Hell Epic has already made Unreal available for browser gaming with Oculus support....
- All this means is that OpenGL will be updated to support the same tech as DX 11.2 as they always do. They will have something equivalent to the Tiled Resources that Microsoft will no doubt be pushing every dev who makes games on XBone to use to encourage PC Gamers to use Windows 8.1 for Windows PC Gaming.

 

How is it a bone headed move by Microsoft? They are not the developers of mantle and we don't know the development path of mantle and the xbox one. Maybe AMD never approached Microsoft to implement it or maybe dev tools for xbox one were already set in stone before mantle was ready/developed. Plus, on a console, I don't see the benefits of mantle when it can be developed and optimized at a much lower level.
Sony hasn't made any statements but I doubt even the ps4 uses mantle. Bone headed move by Sony too? There's no way microsoft would abandon directx and use mantle. Really? All we can hope for is that mantle encourages opengl and directx to become better. But as a new vendor-specific language, widespread adoption is going to be difficult especially with 2 other deeply entrenched, vendor-agnostic languages already around.

 

Is this news to anybody? The Xbox and PS4 APIs were decided long before the announcement. If they used Mantle, AMD would have have mentioned it. The real question has always been whether Mantle is derived from the Xbox and PS3 APIs, not the other way around.

 

I have got to agree with HTWingNut here, you would think they would jump on something that could help optimize games for Xbone, it is already seriously gimped as it is, anything that could give it a boost would be good for us PC gamers, don't forget that over half the games we will be getting will be ported from consoles. pretty much just like it is now, even if Nvidia doesn't use Mantle it is far from being a bad thing for PC gamers, with all the boneheaded moves Microsoft have been pulling this last year I cannot say I am surprised, not in the least, so I totally understand and agree with the choice of words .

 

Other than AMD, who says it would optimize games for the XBone? Staying with Directx helps to protect PC Windows gaming. Mantle and OpenGL could be used with Linux. So they don't want games made with that. They want games to be Windows only. So I see this as a good move for Microsoft.

Of course competition is good for gamers, so this is not the best for gamers.

 

Since aside from you noone in this thread seems to understand the concept of Mantle, here is a quite useful article regarding the topic: AnandTech Portal | AMD Expands On Microsoft Blog Post, Reiterates Mantle Goals

In summary, Mantle is not meant for consoles, it is meant to be a PC environment that is extremely similar to the console low level APIs, thus making porting much easier and allowing for the same low level optimization to be carried over to AMD PC hardware. Console manufacturers don't have to specifically 'support' it, AMD can make it similar to the consoles' APIs anyway, since they supply their hardware.

 

So if the consoles said, hey we want to use Mantle, AMD would say no, it isn't meant for consoles?

 

Console makers don't have to support it but neither do the same developers publishing code on the PC. AMD assumes that because Mantle is similar to the Xbox One API, that developers would take advantage of Mantle on the PC which more than likely won't happen. The developers will optimize for whatever is the most widespread and that happens to be DirectX, not OpenGL and certainly not Mantle. AMD is a minority player in the CPU and GPU markets, they don't hold enough weight for developers to code for their API unless they're paid to do so (e.g. DICE's Frostbite engine).

 

What is so difficult in understanding simple things? Mantle is not meant for consoles. Consoles are already heavily optimized due to their specific components, low-level api's and close to metal programming. Mantle is supposed to bring better optimization to the PC not consoles. If mantle becomes the programmers choice tomorrow, there is nothing Microsoft can do about it, so all this talk of" boneheaded moves by microsoft" is totally unwarranted. Please head over to anandtech and educate yourselves on Amd's aims for mantle. DaCM has graciously provided the link but in case any of you missed it, here it is again AnandTech Portal | AMD Expands On Microsoft Blog Post, Reiterates Mantle Goals

Porting between the Xbox one (which already uses directx 11.x) and Pc's (directx) will still be easier WITHOUT mantle but mantle should be more efficient/optimized.

 

What i dont like about mantle is that it is only supported by current AMD cards, not by Nvidia or current gen cards.. so i for one is with DX here considering not every person upgrades every year and i won't be upgrading anything for a few years

Mantle is more then welcome if current gen Nvidia cards somehow support it, since optimization for PC games is really needed

 

That ball seems to be in nvidia's court. AMD has stated anyone can implement it. Somehow I doubt nvidia will jump on it.

 

..yeah. You know it's a good discussion, when anandtech actually sounds reasonably on top of things in comparison..

 

The way I see it is developers will now have the choice to easily make a separate AMD PC version, that will run extremely well on AMD hardware. Since AMD still has significant market share in PC GPUs, putting some minimal extra effort into making a perfectly optimised game for that market aside from the main version could be a viable option for a lot of developers, especially when their game is a graphically demanding one.

 

Let's say this does allow a console game to be converted to PC for AMD. What about Nvidia users? Are they going to say the game only works for AMD? I doubt that. So they still need a way to make it for Nvidia. So they can use the way they currently develope for Nvidia, which also lets them develope for AMD. So Mantle means two paths for two products, while the current method is one path for two products.

 

It is the developer's choice as I've said, and it could be a viable option in some cases. For exampe Crysis 4 in the future: normal development time, but needs a Titan equivalent to run on maximum vs somewhat longer development time, but would run much better on a significant portion of PCs. Something worth considering in my opinion (especially if they can even make AMD pay some extra for it), but I'm sure game developers will analyse the possible benefits/drawbacks in much greater detail and decide the best course of action.

 

Actually, AMD is the minority in terms of GPU market share, and herein lies a big obstacle for widespread support and adoption of Mantle.

Nvidia is clearly in the dominant position in terms of add-in discrete GPU's. Figures from Q2 2013:



And in terms of overall GPU market share including integrated graphics, Intel is in the dominant position. AMD edges out Nvidia because of the significant number of APU's out there which Nvidia doesn't have, but APU's aren't GCN so meaningless in respect to Mantle.



More affirmation: Steam Hardware & Software Survey

I only see Mantle being adopted by certain game devs if AMD pays them a handsome sum to make their title a heavily AMD-sponsored one, which is what is happening with DICE and BF4. Otherwise it's just more work and investment in man-hours to code for yet another rendering path which would only be of benefit to a relatively small install base. It would be different if Mantle was the low-level API for the next-gen consoles but obviously that's not the case.

 

Bottom line is WHO CARES!?

This whole thing perplexes me though. Video gaming is at it's highest that it has ever been, yet PC gaming is dying, consoles are releasing sub standard hardware, and publishers aren't willing to put their neck on the line for anything. Basically we will have to resort to iPad and browser games apparently since people are too cheap and lemming-like to spend a dime on an industry that could be thriving if they opened their wallets just a little bit. People don't think twice about spending $500 every year for a new iPad and/or iPhone to do meaningless tasks with hardware that should cost 10% of what it is, but cringe at the thought of a $1000 PC that will play all the games they want and then some...

Then there's Microsoft who is killing the OS that catered to PC gaming. That is an entirely different subject altogether.

 

I'm sorry, but how is waxing philosophical about the state of the gaming industry as a whole relevant to the discussion on hand? I can understand you wanting to vent and get that off your chest but there are other avenues to do so. What you said is completely off-topic.

Back on-topic. I know it seems like I've been overly critical of Mantle at times, but my true feeling is that regardless of how it ultimately turns out, it's still a success in the amount of dialogue and awareness it's created within the industry. Microsoft and Khronos have an important part to play in all of this and hopefully Mantle influences the direction they take with Direct3D and OpenGL going forward. The idea of a low-level access API is undoubtedly a good idea and I would love to see this help the two major players evolve their respective API's and remove some layers of abstraction and overhead from them in the near future.

 

I just hope Mantle provides a nice wake up call for Microsoft. Between Mantle and SteamOS, MS better get its act together else the industry will seek alternatives.

 

Ha ha harrhah hahhahah!

You mean, when people stop buying a sub-par pc with overpriced hardware, mired in drm, with proprietary controllers that functionally are the same as a vanilla usb pad, that cannot be used to play any content not specifically signed by the publisher (after expensive licensing that is then tied to a proprietary sdk - which features, among other things, an in-built drm disc control that reduces the actual throughput on a dvd-read to about 1/10th of the actual speed the plate can be read at)?

And the moment people stop falling over themselves to actually pre-buy console exclusives, that everyone and their grandmothers know will turn up on all platforms later, with more competitive pricing.

And the moment when someone says: "hey - why am I paying for my internet connection twice? That doesn't make sense to me, so I'm actually not going to do it - nor will I pretend that 59$ a year is a prohibitive pay-wall that keeps the poor and stinky folks out of my games?

...

I'm still waiting.

 

What the heck are you talking about?

 

I also do not see what that has to do with Mantle, SteamOS, or OpenGL. Proprietary controllers and drm, seem like a good way to derail this thread.

 

It wouldn't give them a boost. It's a step backwards. The XBone development and previous 360 are more likely more efficient and better than the Mantle, it's at the to the metal level, which is superior to a low level API like Mantle.

Secondly, according to MS, their DX 11.2 texture advancement is superior to anything offered by OpenGL, Mantle, anything on Apple OS or simply anything available other than Windows 8.1 and XBone.

As or SteamOS and Mantle, both are fails. I highly doubt Microsoft even blinked after hearing the announcement for SteamOS. SteamOS is as much fail as Mantle is far as I'm concerned. People aren't going to ditch their Nvidia hardware for AMD just to run an inferior Linux gaming platform, that makes no sense.
- Drivers on Linux are so bad and fragmented, I seriously think anyone who is interested in gaming and getting most performance from hardware would be a moron to consider SteamOS.

 

That sentence is full of fail.

Money talks. Buy $500 PC with SteamOS/AMD or $1000 Windows PC/Intel/nVidia that perform the same. 95% of users don't care about the tech, they just care that it offers the games they want to play. I'm really surprised that Valve is using nVidia at all. I would think they'd opt for an all AMD solution similar to consoles.

Dethroning MS gaming is not going to happen overnight. But it will happen. In the past, I would have been the first to say MS will never fall. But I see it in motion already. Tablets, smartphones, cloud computing... MS doesn't seem to want to change nor does nVidia. I want more than anything for PC gaming to survive, but MS is being an old stodgy and dumb company lately. All it takes is new AAA titles supporting SteamOS and we're away to the races. They already develop for multiple consoles, what's another one?

 

How can something be a failure when it isn't out yet? (Rhetorical question)

Why would Valve care if their box uses AMD or Nvidia? I thought their goal is open source. Which would push them away from Mantle, and away from g-sync.

As for Microsoft not changing to keep Windows PC gaming alive, what should they do? Personally, I am amazed they have kept such a strong hold on PC gaming for so long.

 

Because Mantle is supposedly open-source, like SteamOS. And I was referring to the comment about why would anyone drop their nVidia gear for AMD, primary reason, cost. Drop Intel, Windows, and nVidia and those three juggernauts have a premium price tag attached to them with money you can pocket. And G-sync is vaporware and a gimmick until we see and hear otherwise. PhysX cards were supposed to add the computing power to add "real world physics" to games and it became nothing more than trash floating in the air.

I've been an advocate of MS since Windows 3.1, have numerous MCSA certifications, but MS is losing my confidence. Microsoft is becoming more controlling, tightening the grips on what consumers can do with their OS. Win 8 is the perfect example of force down your throat. Stringent requirements for their OS keys, and the cost of their product. Restricting "features" including DirectX 11.2 to Windows 8.1 only with no technical reason it couldn't be compatible with Win 8 and Win 7. Then cancellation of TechNet leaving tens of thousands or more enthusiasts that gave free marketing and support for Microsoft products out in the cold. They are going the opposite direction of what they should be doing, is being more open and listening to their customers. That's what made PC's great to begin with.

Obviously Windows is their "baby" but imagine if they supported DirectX for Linux. Charge a license fee for using it in a non MS OS. It would change the gaming world as we know it. You have OS of choice, and MS could expand their product base into multiple OS's. Open a new opportunity for product sales. Windows is a dead man walking, might as well take opportunity where it exists. They could even become a game publisher. But the problem is they can't seem to manage their way out of a straight line single corridor maze in broad daylight. They tried GFWL and it failed miserably. Why? Because they concentrated on making the DRM more annoying than helpful. Their management priorities are in the wrong place.

 

Microsoft isn't as stupid as you think. They know all this. They are trying to milk their traditional revenue streams for as much as they can while they slowly transform the company into something totally Apple-esque.

 

not even. .

 

Its funny how Valve chose this time to unveil steam os. They still make boatloads of cash from Windows. But what has changed recently? The Windows app store. Anyone who thinks Valve is developing steam os for anything other than a hedge preservation of their bottom line in case MS overthrows them on Windows is deluding themselves.
The writing is on the wall for them if MS can make the Windows app store succeed. All that talk of steam os competing against consoles was just fud. Sure they both reside in the living room but the similarities end there. And that's a hardware thing. Nothing stops windows from doing the same thing + the steam controller will also work in Windows. What does steam os bring to the table software-wise that's not possible now? Unless somehow opengl/mantle are crippled on windows.

 

lulz @ SteamOS. If anything is failure or vaporware, it's SteamOS. Complete fail.

It won't be anything more than streaming games from PC to another box, which seems like redundancy fail at a new level of idiocy.

 

Possibly true, but I am still holding out a bit of hope. If it ends up being a true OS, and has web browsing functionality, can run openoffice, and stream netflix, well that there would cover about all my personal needs for my next htpc/small gaming computer and I imagine would do so for a lot of others. I'd also wager that twitch.tv and other social media services would be baked in as well. Time shall tell

 

I am still kind of new here. And I am at fault as well, but should we care if thread has gone off topic? Seems to happen a lot. Or should I just go with it?

 

Just go with it, I say. If a post is about an actual problem that someone is trying to solve, decorum indicates you stick to the topic as much as possible. For threads like this (or my personal favourite, Bob's 200 steam game thread), I say let 'em go where they will. The mods seem to be pretty good at locking threads that go way overboard without any entertainment value.

 

Yeah. And mantle is tangentially related to steam os in a way. Plus any discussion about mantle will degrade as follows:
Poster 1: Mantle will increase game performance by 80%........
Poster 2: Mantle sux. Amd only. What about nvidia?.........
Poster 3: Mantle is the best thing since sliced bread and its M$ fault we don't already have such performance. On steam os, mantle will have 250% improvement. Suck on it microtards........
Speaking of mantle, after seeing the R9-290X reviews, I can only imagine it with mantle's claimed improvements and driver updates. That card will be a killer, although heat and noise are issues to be overcome.

 

LULZ @ Windows app store. Have you even looked at the Windows app store? You can't even browse Windows app store unless you have Windows 8! There's a handful of games that are not much more than your traditional Flash games. What incentive do devs/pubs have for releasing to Windows app store?

Bookmark this post and revisit in a year... I think you'll be eating crow. SteamOS is not vaporware, it exists. Steambox is only recommended by Steam, but anyone can build their own system to install SteamOS.

 

I wish there was an easy way to look back at these predictions and see who was right.

 

well ive been around since 2004 and htwingnut being wrong is like saying fish walk on land

 

Remember how Steam was when it came out? People always seem to have selective short term memories. Steam was a steaming pile of crap (no pun intended) when it 1st came out but refinement and polishing over time have brought it to where it is now. Even the oft maligned origin is slowly getting better (still not fast enough though) + steam is there as a benchmark to spur them on.

Just look at the policies MS originally wanted to implement on the xbox one. None of those policies would look out of place on steam and are mostly even better than what steam has in place now but taking away the resales of discs was just too much.

 

It's too bad fish do walk on land, lol

<iframe width='480' height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SvRtOYGMWV8" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

i knew that...i was trying to say 99.99 percent of the time your right..not100 geesh that would mean your the only perfect human on earth...btw why does my nose look brown

 

Well, I think HTwingnut is too harsh on the Windows Store. Yes, it needs work. But if they make it simular to Steam, where you can run programs on any computer as long as you are logged in, then they will have something. They have potential.

As to why would a developer what to be in the Windows store, that is easy. Right now the Apple and Android stores have tons of apps. There are tons of apps for everything. So if a dev puts another app in those stotes, it gets burried. This is not the case with the Windows store. An app there stands out more. And I notice that apps that have been around the longest, and are decent, tend to do better. Maybe they get more word of mouth, or people look at the download numbers, or the store pushes them, but they tend to stay on top.

From what I see, the store looks to be a big part of the Windows 10 plan. Which is to be more cloud based with apps. So I don't see the store going away anytime soon.

As for Microsoft licensing Directx, yes it would be good for gaming. But bad for Windows. One of the reasons some people buy Windows is because of the gaming. They could sell Directx, but that would cost them a Windows sale. They make more money on Windows than they would on Directx. And if you have been around that long, you will remember they developed Directx to increase Windows sales.

 

I was just rereading the thread title and it's like b really? MS is supporting only direct x? You don't say...

 

Good find! I just realized how ridiculous Xbox One and OpenGL being in the same sentence is.

 

Too bad for them to stick with dx11.2 with their hardware. Maybe they would have been able to have most of their games at higher res than 720p

 

Listen HTWingNut, if you're gonna go off about how Mantle is the greatest thing ever and G-Sync is "vaporware and a gimmick," it would at least behoove you to do a little more research and understand these technologies better, otherwise you just make yourself look uninformed.

I don't know why you keep spouting this nonsense about Mantle being "open" because most people in the industry can agree that Nvidia will almost certainly never have anything to do with it. G-Sync is their indirect response to Mantle. I find it ironic that you call G-Sync "vaporware and a gimmick" but not Mantle because we already know for a fact that G-Sync is incredible while Mantle is an unknown entity at this point with the potential to be incredible. G-Sync has already been very publicly demonstrated and its hardware partners announced, while absolutely nothing has been shown of Mantle so far and we only know one game which will incorporate it. Then there is the fundamental issue that G-Sync will benefit every game, while Mantle will only benefit certain games. G-Sync's main obstacle has to do with adoption by monitor makers, while Mantle's success rides on adoption by game devs.

I highly suggest reading this forum post by Linus Sebastian, who was on-hand at the unveiling of both Mantle and G-Sync. Specifically, this quote directed at the naysayers such as yourself who are absolutely wrong about G-Sync:

 

What is that G-Sync? Can someone please to explain in very short, because I would not like to spend pages again to understand something, which probably a marketing bull too...

 

NVIDIA Announces G-Sync, Variable Refresh Rate Monitor Technology | PC Perspective

AnandTech | NVIDIA's G-Sync: Attempting to Revolutionize Gaming via Smoothness

 

nVidias propietary way of changing how video is handled between GPU/Monitor, ensuring both actually working together instead of one adapting to the other. We traditionally use monitors with refresh rates and convert signals similar as to when we had CRTs despite LCDs functioning completely differently.

There is no reason for a particular proprietary solution, and nVidia doing this should be an eye opener to doing things in a new way. We should definitely see the impact of G-sync and hopefully an evolution for a non proprietary adaptation. Still it is one of the better changes in the gaming industry for a while. Instead of trying to fix typical issues (tearing, stuttering, lag etc) due to how frames are displayed on a monitor, nVidia adapted the monitor with additional hardware, to display only what matters


and non topic related: I hate the word Apps... hahahaha. I also dislike the different worlds of Apps vs desktop programs in windows 8. Good thing I managed to uninstall most apps.