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Comment by cocotino | Hacker News Reader

MS supporting Vulkan instead of DX would be shooting at their own feet. Makes 0 sense to them.

> MS supporting Vulkan instead of DX would be shooting at their own feet. Makes 0 sense to them.

Same as supporting standard HTML instead of ActiveX and Silverlight? If not using lock-in is shooting in one's own feet, you have some strange notion of what's normal.

I don't see the parallel there. HTML was always a secular technology, unlike DirectX which was created and developed by Microsoft for Microsoft.

I guess you don't remember browser wars. Until MS started supporting standard HTML, they were pushing all kind of junk like ActiveX and Silverlight, in attempt to monopolize the Web with lock-in. Only when browsers competition intensified, they reluctantly started supporting standards (even WebGL). Some still suffer from that lock-in though, such as South Korea who are stuck with very bad decision of requiring ActiveX for bank transactions.

Exactly same thing here. They used DX to lock 3D graphics into their platforms.

Microsoft deservedly lost because they failed to innovate. But that isn't the case with graphics, where they have been at the forefront of innovation for well over a decade now. OpenGL has historically lagged behind DirectX in terms of features, ease of use and performance. Only in the last couple years has anyone (Mantle, Vulkan) actually begun to threaten Microsoft's dominance and if DirectX is inferior it should lose, but to equate that with how the HTML wars went is glossing over a lot of detail.

> Microsoft deservedly lost because they failed to innovate.

Whether they lost deservedly or not, lock-in is always a crooked practice.

See my other comment[1], that with DX12, it's more clear that MS are doing it for the sake of lock-in. Problem with it - it doesn't compete on merits on Xbox for instance. Because it's the only thing supported there.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12211987

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