You gents posted the link to the first article, but not Promit's second article where Microsoft responded to him and where Promit posted his final thoughts on the matter before he was executed.

Isnt that all just useless requoting of a rewording quote of a quote of some unconfirmed email with 90% useless marketing speak and 10% marketing speak for recognizing years too late that the DX library is not a separate library anymore but a OS component?

It's not an unconfirmed email, and it's a Microsoft internal email sent to a Microsoft VP. Promit is a Microsoft-recognized community liason, a MVP - he doesn't work for Microsoft, but he works with Microsoft as part of Microsoft's developer outreach program, if I understand it correctly (which I might not!). If he says Microsoft sent him (and all MVPs) an email, it's heavily likely that Microsoft really did and wouldn't be unusual or odd).

He can be all that, but still that article seems to be basically an overdramatization of a willingly misunderstood and badly shortened misquotation...

Either he quoted it, or he misquoted it. Seeing that it appears he seemingly copied and pasted it, and implies it is a direct quote, I'm not sure what you mean.

If you mean he's quoting a small snippet of a larger email, yes, that's true. If you mean he's quoting it out of context of the surrounding paragraphs, that's possibly also true.

Over dramatizaiton? Possibly so!

I just don't get why you think it's misquoted. Misquoted implies the wording of the quote has been changed (accidentally or intentionally). What evidence leads you to believe and twice claim the wording was changed?

You said, "Isnt that all just useless requoting of a rewording quote of a quote of some unconfirmed email with 90% useless marketing speak and 10% marketing speak for recognizing years too late that the"

requoting - that implies it was already quoted once. No, Promit quoted it directly from the email. It's a direct quote, not a requote.

rewording - No, it was likely copied and pasted. What makes you believe otherwise?

Quote of a quote - Uh, no, it's a direct quote. Unless you are referring to the news article instead of Promit's blog - which, being the source, is what is being discussed.

willfully misunderstood - Misunderstood, maybe. But willfully misunderstood is quite an accusation.

misquotation - Uh, no. And you already said 'requoting

unconfirmed - He's a MVP, so "He can be all that" was directed specifically to your accusation that it's likely invalid.

useless marketing - speech - It was written under NDA, not intending to have become public. Further, if it was marketing they wouldn't have been so careless in their wording, and wouldn't have the negative connotations in it. It would've been spun alot better (instead of not spun at all).

Overdramatization or badly misunderstood and badly shortened? Valid claims. But all the rest of your many accusations are not just overdramatization - they are made up exaggerations.

You said, "Isnt that all just...". The answer is, no it's not. 50% of what you said is inaccurate or, ironically, unconfirmed or over-dramatized. The rest of what you said (over-dramatized or misunderstood) is quite possible, but just speculation. What makes you think the wording of the quote has been changed, willfully or accidentally?

The email is real, I got the same one (or rather the same series of emails). I don't want to get into about the specifics of the email, but I will say the whole thing was bizarre and needlessly confusing.

I specifically and deliberately abandoned MS technologies a little
over 3 years ago. I’m fortunate: I’m not in games, so Direct3D-OpenGL
comparisons were not a factor.

Everything in your last two posts confirms all the signs I saw and
that influenced my decision. It’s sad, really, that this is what
Microsoft has come to: a lock-in proposition of diminishing value due to
increasing irrelevance.

Good luck, guys.

Comment by oluseyidotinfo — February 1, 2013

It's good to know that guy is still alive. He was staff and vanished a couple of years before the migration if I'm not mistaken. Well I'm assuming that's the same guy and not a common name where he's from.

I thought it was clear that my posting was just a sarcastic exaggeration to emphasize how overdramatized I found the article in the thread starting post, no need to pick apart every word of mine, especially when I did not say "it is that way" but "seems to be" to tell just my feelings about the validity of the article in the thread starting post (perhaps I should have explicitly typed this out to avoid confusing readers), that quoted another blogpost(from that person you want to defend) which just only quoted shortened bits of that email(so one cannot reconstruct the full meaning of it) and seemed a bit undicided on how to interpret the email.

On the other hand, MS have been in a position where they've had 3 3D APIs on the go - PC D3D, 360 whatever-it-is and XNA. That's quite a bit of unnecessary overhead and duplication, and with a new console generation coming up, now seems a good time to call a halt to independent (and potentially divergent) evolutions and begin the process of rolling everything together. This fits quite nicely with the statement that "Microsoft is actively investing in DirectX as the unified graphics foundation for all of our platforms".

I may be wrong but I think I'm right.

But ain't that pretty okay? I mean wouldn't that make everything more easy for small game developers? It would seem like we do not need to spend so much time porting games to consoles then... Or am I wrong here?

My reading of it is that you're right, yes. I predict an API consolidation to coincide with (1) the release of the 360's successor, and (2) what would have otherwise been the next major release of DirectX. Of course this is just speculation on my part, I have no concrete info of any kind, but I think things have been moving in that direction for some time and the timing would be right for it.

I thought it was clear that my posting was just a sarcastic exaggeration to emphasize how overdramatized I found the article in the thread starting post, no need to pick apart every word of mine, especially when I did not say "it is that way" but "seems to be" to tell just my feelings about the validity of the article in the thread starting post (perhaps I should have explicitly typed this out to avoid confusing readers), that quoted another blogpost(from that person you want to defend) which just only quoted shortened bits of that email(so one cannot reconstruct the full meaning of it) and seemed a bit undicided on how to interpret the email.

My sarcasm detection over the internet fails majorly - I thought you were directly attacking the integrity of a respected member of the community with unfounded accusations, so I took apart your post to show that it was unfounded. If your post was directed at the original article, my mistake! I mistakenly thought from your second post that you knew we were discussing the MVP's blog post.