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Comment by vulkansdk2 | Hacker News Reader

Vulkan is okay.

Proton has the energy of open source clones of video games.

There’s a reason games aren’t made for Vulkan, even on platforms like Android.

It’s not just because there is a lack of market share.

Valve’s immense resources would be better spent on making Source Engine work for more game genres; itself support Vulkan better, or even default to Vulkan on Windows; make it fully free. If they really felt strongly about this.

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Better spent? Proton is what enables tons of Linux users play tons of otherwise Windows-only games. Plus it's not exclusive in the first place. In combination with Steam Deck it's console killer.

>In combination with Steam Deck it's console killer

Are you saying that Proton + Linux seriously threatening, killing, the market of PS5/Xbox Series/Nintendo Switch?

Steam Deck is kinda on some path there.

Steam Deck sold about 3 million units; Playstation 5 about 30 million, X-Box about 20 million, Nintendo Switch about 130 million. Steam has about 120 million active accounts.

I mean, it's successful I guess, but also not exactly taking over the world.

Well it's v1.0. Lot's of rough edges too! I see 3 million as a big number for an open/linux gaming console.

Well, the first Playstation sold about 100 million units; the NES about 60 million. Of course they had longer to sell those units, this is offset by the lower population, lower cost, and a smaller market (less Chinese people were able to afford a NES or even Playstation 1). Even the Dreamcast sold about 9 million units, which wasn't enough to keep Sega afloat. To get to numbers of the same magnitude we need to get to the Sega CD with about 2.2 million units sold, and that's widely considered to be a huge failure.

I see no reason to buy any other console. Just the game availability and pricing makes it a no brainer for me. How long is it going to take the wider public to realize, is another story.

The Steam Deck is regarded as a competitor to the Nintendo Switch yeah?

If there’s a company that can increase market share and adoption for Vulkan it’s Valve

Vulkan isnt perfect but it’s the only open source step in the right direction and is enabling things like proton to exist.

> Proton has the energy of open source clones of video games.

Sorry, what?

> Valve’s immense resources would be better spent on making Source Engine work for more game genres; itself support Vulkan better

Source Engine Vulkan support uses DXVK, and the main driver for DXVK development is Proton. So in a roundabout way, they are supporting Vulkan better.

> or even default to Vulkan on Windows

Is said Vulkan on Windows default better?

Most pretty naive direct DirectX-to-Vulkan conversions (running DXVK under Windows) have sightly worse performance that just using DirectX directly, and the proprietary Radeon Windows and Nvidia Windows drivers hide a lot of implementation-specific optimizations and workarounds for common game and application bugs.

Despite not being public, Valve still operates under capitalist pretenses. This means that their time is "best spent" on what generates revenue. Predictably, this means getting their commerce platform on as many devices as possible. That's made possible by Proton.

The side benefit is that the abstraction layer they are building will introduce near-parity between GPU APIs, which renders the whole thing moot.

> Proton has the energy of open source clones of video games

Given what it’s capable of, that’s one of the most uncharitable takes I’ve ever seen on Proton.

What's wrong with Vulkan? I was under the impression that it's pretty similar to DX12, and a big improvement over OpenGL.

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