It seems SemiAccurate was...accurate - Microsoft just took Mantle and renamed it DX12, to call it their own "innovation":<p><a href="http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/18/microsoft-adopts-mantle-calls-dx12/" rel="nofollow">http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/18/microsoft-adopts-mantle-c...</a>
I am not a graphics / engine programmer but I know a decent amount of what goes into programming a game, and I have to call "suspect" on the claim that low level graphics API programming was heretofore only available on game consoles like the Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Microsoft Xbox One!
I guess this means that if I want to get the most out of my games I'll have to "upgrade" to Windows 8.1. Not super excited about having to configure away all of the metro garbage.
I am not excited, as MS's track record shows, any of their "improvements" are not backwards compatible with old OSes. For example IE11 is so awesome! SO AMAZING! Not compatible with Windows XP, yet Chrome and Firefox is still.<p>MS's desire to ship their latest OS has hurt developers over the years. I hope people still chose Open GL over DX-whatever.
Closed source API's like DirectX won't ever be as fast as an open source API standard like OpenGL.<p>This is why games like Left-4-Dead2 using OpenGL run substantially faster (More FPS) (<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows" rel="nofollow">http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-fas...</a>)