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> Metal only covers Apple. Vulkan covers so much more. I'm not sure "more" is the right term here. There are about 1.3 billion iPhone users worldwide. Sure,
by dev_tty01 2y ago
> Metal only covers Apple. Vulkan covers so much more.
I'm not sure "more" is the right term here. There are about 1.3 billion iPhone users worldwide. Sure, Vulkan covers more OS environments, but how important is that to a game developer vs. total available users? Does Vulkan user reach exceed 1.3 billion?
- nemomarx 2y agoHow many iphone users will pay 60 dollars for a game, like you can try and achieve on Steam or Switch? I feel like the iOS game market is pretty different.
- jppittma 2y agoMore money is spent/made made on iOS gaming than on traditional PC gaming, even if the $60 up front model isn't something iOS users are willing to accept. I almost think they're right to tolerate mtx models btw. At least if games are f2p, companies aren't releasing them broken/unfinished.
- mycocola 2y agoCan't release unfinished/broken games, when what they're releasing are not games at all.
- _carbyau_ 2y agoOS coverage vs pure numbers is something for the game developer to be worried about, and by extension the game engine devs. You want to get into the iOS gaming market, go Metal. By definition you've expressed you don't care about the other OS's. You want to make a AAA game, you probably don't go Metal if you want enough market coverage to recoup your costs - though I will be delighted to be proven wrong when a AAA iPhone game comes. If Apple want to change their "AAA game" attractiveness they need to address this. It's not that hard - the article took a month but even a year is fine. Apple just needs to get it done, but it doesn't seem like they care to make User<->GameDev relationship easy. Either the gamedev needs a whole other version of their game on Metal. Or the users have to do a lot of homework and fiddling to get a modern AAA game to run. I wonder if they have Vulkan internally and simply know their GPU won't look good in direct comparisons - which is fair; beating or even leveling with nVidia is hard. But if anyone can show AMD and Intel how to do it....
- pjmlp 2y agoAAA don't care about Vulkan, they care about Apple, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft proprietary APIs.
- SleepyMyroslav 2y agominor nitpick: did care when Google Stadia was in the list. But it did not worked out and everyone took a big L on that and now Vulkan support has been mostly purged already.
- pjmlp 2y agoThe reason why Stadia is no more, is exactly because they don't care. Google was starting to offer a DirectX porting kit on the same year they decided to ramp down Stadia, there is even a GDC talk on it.
- SleepyMyroslav 2y agoMy opinion on the facts I saw don't agree with your interpretation. No one here on HN cares about it =) so I just drop it. My hot take is that when AAA games will be shipped on mac os they will not use porting kit in runtime and just call Metal. Imho API court battles are fun to watch from afar.
- troupo 2y ago> You want to make a AAA game, you probably don't go Metal if you want enough market coverage to recoup your costs Likewise you don't care about Vulkan. You care about DirectX and whatever Playstation has
- talldayo 2y ago> You care about DirectX ...exactly. Which is why, unless you're given a license to re-impliment DirectX, it makes so much more sense to use Vulkan and it's DX9 through DX12 translation layer. What am I missing here?
- atq2119 2y agoSurely there are more Android users than iPhone users worldwide, and if you target Android you target Vulkan.
- pjmlp 2y agoOnly if we don't care about those using devices where OpenGL ES is still more stable, with less buggy drivers. If you only care about latest Android versions, and Samsung and Google phones, sure go Vulkan.
- talldayo 2y agoMy brother in Christ, OpenGL ES is officially depreciated on all Apple platforms. It is not "more stable, with less buggy drivers", I've used it.
- pjmlp 2y agoI thought we are talking about Android, and which APIs makes business sense, when AAA actually want to get paid, instead of having to pay back store returns.