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I tried to think of a reason not to support OpenGL. Their Directx seams to be completely free and a lot of Indies are workin with OGL. So I see no reason not too support it. Since they use AMD, whose drivers have very good OpenGL, it wouldn't be that much work either. Im not trying to make them support it, I'm just trying to find out their reasons. So does anyone have a clue?

pnuts
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user2741831
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1 Answers1

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It's very simple: corporate policy. DirectX is Microsoft's graphics API; OpenGL isn't, and the Xbox is a closed Microsoft ecosystem. Therefore, the Xbox supports DirectX but not OpenGL.

Mark
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  • So you say, Microsoft doesn't support OpenGL, simply because its not made by them and they are willing to sacrifice profit for that? Seams a little bit condescending. – user2741831 Apr 02 '14 at 06:55
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    @user2741831: That's exactly how it is. Microsoft does this not only on their game consoles, but with Windows as well: Since Windows Vista, Microsoft has drivers supplied by the vendors in their driver repository, so that automatic driver updates would always get the latest driver versions and bugfixes. However despite Intel, AMD and NVidia having perfectly fine OpenGL implementations in their GPU drivers, Microsoft decided, that they'd strip the OpenGL part and put GPU drivers without an OpenGL ICD into their repository. So without installing the drivers directly from the vendors, no OpenGL. – datenwolf Apr 02 '14 at 09:10
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    @user2741831: Or actually no modern OpenGL, because there's a OpenGL-1.4 emulation layer on top of Direct3D in Windows. Why OpenGL-1.4? Because OpenGL-1.5 was the first version to include all the intersting things. Totally ridiculous. It proliferated the development of projects like ANGLE to emulate higer versions of OpenGL for things like WebGL or Qt5's internal use of OpenGL. – datenwolf Apr 02 '14 at 09:12
  • @user2741831 This is present in a lot more systems than Xbox, it simply doesn't make sense for microsoft to **not** use their own graphics API on their own projects. You're going to see this sort of advertising for a large majority companies. If you pushed a lot of funding into an API of your choice, obviously you're going to want people to use your own API as much as possible. Your analogy is also a lot more radical than Xbox and directX, microsoft is smart for promoting their own software and has all the reasons to do so. – Syntactic Fructose Apr 02 '14 at 20:50
  • I'm not saying they should exclusively use DX, hell I don't even say, its a bad API. I just think its a toxic attitude to block out other technologies, even tough that would make it possible for devs to develop for the system without rewritting the entire renderer. (I know a lot of big devs use DX, but a lot of Indies as well as ID use OGL). And I don't think it would be really any work for them, to implement them. Xbox runs on a Windows kernel, and drivers with OGL for Windows already exist on all Major Graphics-Cards. And since they don't get any money from people using DX in their games, – user2741831 Apr 03 '14 at 07:04
  • I wonder why they even bother blocking OGL and loosing revenue(was out of chars) – user2741831 Apr 03 '14 at 07:04
  • @user2741831, don't doubt it, it has been like this for a long time. OpenGL suffered a lot historically because of Microsoft. – Danguafer Aug 10 '14 at 06:11
  • This answer is absolutely correct, but it's also "in the name™". The "Xbox" is called "Xbox" because it's a dedicated "DirectX" "Box" with the hardware and software laser focused on that. It's supposed to be a showcase of what the SDK is capable of, and there's absolutely no interest in supporting OGL or even Vulkan, despite Microsoft also being a contributing member to the Khronos Group: https://www.khronos.org/members/list . But the Xbox is designed to play DirectX powered games, and nothing else. Playstation only supports OGL and no DirectX at all, this should fuel the same ire, no? – RedactedProfile Aug 14 '20 at 23:19