Quote:Is Microsoft giving the big FU to game devs?

Definitely not. They are giving the Yuck Fou to everyone, regardless of their job, sex or political beliefs :)

I have seen the above idea on an early MSDN article quite some months ago. Namely, that, at least as a first step, they end support to standard winapi and strongly encourage everybody to migrate to .NET. But I would not worry for at least 4-5 years about complete lack of support for it, its way too deeply linked. (And I am a newby at .NET -> (therfore) .NET sucks..).

Did they talk about timeline at the conference? I'd very much like to know about that.

I still wonder how the idea of .NET writen drivers hasn't upset some stomachs yet. After all, they would have to take their own medicine if they go all the way through with it.

Tudor

Quote:Original post by Shannon Barber
I don't see how they could build the CLR without the Win32/64 API.

In its current incarnation, I don't suppose they can, but with each new OS, they have the opportunity to reverse the situation - where once the Win API was the base, with the CLR being written to run on top of it, in the future, the CLR will become the base, with the Win API will be a thin layer over the top.

At least, that's how I understand it from the vague rumours I've read on forums like this.

John B

Its actually just the opposite, MS is working hard to improve the development enviroment/platform for all developers, with a big chunk off their efforts having to do with games and multimedia. Games are the 3rd largest computer use as reported in a recent study, just behind the internet and email. I believe the numbers indeicated that 20-25% of people use their computers to play games regularly, making it a major factor in the success of the platform as a whole.

Sometimes one has to adopt a new paradigm to move forward, However. For example MS has said that DX 10 would break compatability with prior versions 7, 8 and 9, to provide a better platform going forward. MS can't simple abandon all that DX 7-9 software though, so there will be a compatability layer, probably a call-translator, as is already done with DX 3 and 5.

MS, as big as they are, are nothing without their developers, so it benefits them to make life as easy on us as possible. They've also taken steps to provide free software to us in the form of the free Visual C++ compiler and other offerings. I hope to see them provide a basic version of their IDE along with the compiler as well in the future (Most [all?] other platform vendors provide free compilers/IDEs as well.)

Game programmers are normally slow-on-the-update when it involves a switch of system, its like people buring Win16/32 boxes when everyone migrated away from DOS.

Quote:Right now Microsoft has 4 main competitors, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP for the new OS

What do you mean, competitors? MS owns them - and MS no longer supports win98 - no more new win98 updates.