So my friend and I were having a friendly argument about game development and the tools we use. I prefer to use DirectX while he prefers XNA. During the course of this argument, he tried to convince me that XNA was a million times better than DirectX, and that DirectX was dying. Now, I can see the usefulness and appeal of XNA for indie developers and small companies, so I can see DirectX as possibly dying as an indie tool, but what about the major companies? Is DirectX dying for them as well? Just curious to see what you think.

XNA uses DirectX on Windows, and likely uses the DirectX-like API available on the 360 as well. Nor is XNA available outside the managed language environment. There is therefor no logical bases for any claims that DirectX is "dying." End of story.

DirectX is dying in the same way you and I die a little bit everyday.

Also, XNA is just a relatively thin wrapper around DirectX.

It's refreshing to see this rather than "Is OpenGL Dying?" =D

No it's not. Frameworks like XNA are built on top of DirectX. E.g. the UDK (which is probably a bazillion times better than XNA) is built on top of DirectX as well. DirectX is at the core of most PC/360 game engines.

Quote: It's refreshing to see this rather than "Is OpenGL Dying?" =D

You're welcome. [smile]

Thanks for the replies. I thought that XNA was a wrapper around DirectX but I wasn't sure. Thanks for clearing that up.

If there is a dying platform then its OpenGL. Recently I have seen tons of developers switching from OpenGL to DirectX.

Glide on the other hand...

Quote: Original post by schupf
If there is a dying platform then its OpenGL. Recently I have seen tons of developers switching from OpenGL to DirectX.

Well, it seems to me that most of the "up and coming" platforms for independent developers, like iPhones, &#106avascript, and Android only have OpenGL support. I mean, sure, if you are only ever going to develop for Xbox and Windows you might want to "switch to" DirectX but otherwise I'm not seeing it.

Not to mention that there is more to graphics than games. Many other industries rely on OpenGL because it is what they've used for years, and DirectX doesn't run on Unix clusters.

In before the flame war!

Nothing ever actually dies. Most software evolves up to the point where it is superceded at which point it sort of "fades".

To the OP, Your friend may have been referring to the way c++ developers are gradually switching away from using directX and its c++ api to newer languages, but this is more of a discussion of whether c++ is dying.

Uh oh... I said it now :(