Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Not really, for example in the OpenGL era there was this urban myth that game consoles used OpenGL, this was never really the case.

Nintendo after graduating to devkits where C and C++ could be used like N64, had OpenGL inspired APIs, which isn't really the same. Although there was some GLSL like shader support.

They only started supporting Khronos APIs with the Switch, and even then, if you want the full power of the Switch, NVN is the way to go.

Playstation always had proprietary APIs, they did a small stint OpenGL ES 1.0 + Cg, which had very little to no uptake among developers, and they dropped it from the devkits.

Sega only had proprietary APIs, and there was a small collaboration with Microsoft for DirectX, which only a few studios took advantage of.

XBox naturally has always been about DirectX.

Go watch GDC Vault programming track to see how many developers you will find complaining about writing middleware for their game engines, if any at all, versus how many talks about taking the advantage of every little low level detail of hardware architecture.





Early console APIs were more similar to Direct3D 1, with very rudimentary immediate mode commands. Modern console APIs still have a less stateful, easy API layer, like D3D10/11, but also expose more low-level stuff, too.

OpenGL didn't match the hardware well except on SGI hardware or carryover descendants like 3dfx.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: