Mycroft

@Rootbeer

Microsoft could still do that if they wanted to, it wouldnt be much more than a number to most people. It wouldn't be appropriate for 360 and PC to share the exact same DX version though, there's plenty that's unnecessary for both systems. See Goodwins excellent post. It doesn't make sense from a developer perspective to do what you're saying. Porting between PC and 360 is still relatively a piece of cake with Microsofts XNA tools, as DX doesnt stand still porting issues are always an issue.

Microsoft are doing a similar thing to your idea in Vista anyway with the rating system, which is a much finer way for consumers to see how good their PC is and what games it can run. Microsoft are doing alot with their "Games for Windows" initiative to make PC gaming simpler and similar to the 360 experience.

Also, the major advance in DX10 is the context switching capability, allowing Vista to give multiple programs access to the card simultaneously, bringing it closer to a specialised CPU. This is important because the desktop itself is accelerated, X360 has no use for that feature. The 2 consoles are very similar this time which is great, as last time PS2 held down xboxs potential coming so much later. PS3 has a slightly better CPU if you can thread it correctly and Xbox has a better GPU, but in the end it probably won't mean much to most games. Its not like its going to be noticeably different.

This isn't news at all to anyone but the lay person. The PS3 is pretty much a standard off-the-shelf Direct X 9 compliant one, but Sony will obviously be using a pared down, specialised version of GL called OpenGL ES 2 for DX9 level vertex/pixel shaders. 360 has a more advanced GPU than PS3, similar to DX10 features with a unified architecture, compression etc and some snazzy new ones like high speed FSAA cache to offload work. Sony's original plan was to use the cell for the gfx work too, but in the end it was necessary to bolt a PC part on. Will be interesting to possibly see Cell GPUs in the future.

Great video, love the more candid look. Phil seems like a cool guy, gives more honest and funny presentations than the other management