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Yes, I also think Nvidia played a key role in it. They saved time on reinventing the wheel with their Tegra chip and used existing Vulkan driver for it. At the same time, why can't AMD do the same with others? They should convince Sony to use Vulkan in the new PS#.


Do they really have to? The console APIs on both PS3 and PS4 (and Xbox 360 / Xbox One) were very similar to Vulcan already.


It doesn't make it any easier. They (AMD) need to do double work (implementing another driver). And someone has to pay for it. It's an expense and time wasting which can be avoided if they'd have used Vulkan.


I'm skeptical that AMD would implement the API and driver for a console. That's sounds like platform work, and I think that would make it the console manufacturer's job. AMD might say "here's the chip's specs and we support API X and Y for it", and if Sony or MS don't like it, they can change it themselves.


> I'm skeptical that AMD would implement the API and driver for a console. That's sounds like platform work, and I think that would make it the console manufacturer's job.

AMD make GPUs for both Xbox and PlayStation. It's very probable, that they are writing drivers for them, as well as supporting APIs implementatinos. They follow requirements from Sony and MS naturally, but they do the heavy lifting.

And if you are right, and someone like AMD don't do anything besides providing the documentation, Nintendo are actually being smart there. Instead of wasting time and money on reinventing the wheel, they use existing high quality driver and API implementation from Nvidia. It's a win win for everyone.




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