Market still very cool on DirectX 11

Posted on Tuesday, November 16 2010 @ 0:47 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck

Bright Side of News noticed most of today's top-selling games are still DirectX 9, few take advantage of DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 is still very rare.

Now, let’s see what we have here. The top 6 games are DX9 we do not even see a DX10 game until the 7th place slot and no DX11 until 10th place. This is a huge indicator that while AMD and nVidia are fighting for the fastest DX11 GPU crown the market just does not care enough about this to buy into it.

We are seeing something of a trend and one that we have talked about on more than one occasion. The hardware is outpacing the money and time available to the developers coding these games. Because of this we are seeing halfhearted implementations of Direct X10 and 11 features. Games like Bioshock and Bioshock 2 only have DX10 surfaces. Left 4 Dead also implements only part of the API. We are seeing the same thing with DX11. The costs involved in building a fully DX11 game are very high not to mention the time to implement them; meanwhile the market wants these games now..

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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Re: Market still very cool on DirectX 11
by Anonymous on Tuesday, November 16 2010 @ 13:18 CET

That is ridiculous. The top games of "today" were in development 1-3 years ago. The very fact that you see ANY DX11 games is a sign of the times (games getting developed faster).

2011 would be a much better time to see DX11 games, and you will. Go look at the prerelease info for Dungeon Siege 3, Neverwinter 2011 and so forth and you'll see a lot more DX10/11 games. The further reason 2011 will be more telling is that those games coming out in 2011 for DX11 will be easily ported to the consoles coming in 2012 that will have DX11 included in them.

Moreover, the consoles are also going to implement a full switch over (when they arrive) to DX11 which is when you won't see any more DX9 releases afterwards, period.

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