Wow... Just shoot me please.
"Buying things enhances my gaming and entertainment experience."

?!?!?!??!?
FUUUUUUUUUUUUU

They need to make a catchy tune and play that backwards repeatedly. I hear Lilly Allen is hard up for work she is available.

Oh. So that's what it feels like for my innocence to die.

I'm just going to huddle in the corner and weep. :(

The title of this thread confuses me. What makes them tone deaf?

LOL I just noticed that.
I didn't hear any notably bad music in the video...

The issue there is that DirectX is Windows only, and while I trust his sense of what APIs are better from a technical stand point, I do think his reason for not switching is equally interesting.

OpenGL is a much older standard and if you choose to go with DirectX you're basically stuck on Windows without a major porting effort. IIRC his reason for not using DirectX had to do with him wanting to be able to port the code to other platforms and more importantly to have whatever engine he works on next to be available for sale to as many different developers as possible. Some of whom are writing code to run on OSX and some that are working on the trifecta OSX, Windows and Linux.

The more important question is why MS was allowed to use it's monopoly position to bring in DirectX when for a significant period of time at the beginning of the 3D accelerator revolution DirectX just wasn't very good compared to the alternatives.
It's apparently an idiom localized to this side of the pond. It's a way of indicating that they've heard the message but come to the wrong conclusion about what's been said. Sort of like if one were listening to a song, but had a deficiency in identifying the tones that compose it. You'd still hear it, you just wouldn't hear the right song. Or really any song at all if you're that tone deaf.

Yuck. I've had to turn to the PS3 to play "modern" games, and will keep the fat on my computer limited to dosbox driven and infinity engine games. I need my computer for productivity and work and can't deal with the MS creep into the gaming experience. Though I first considered a PS3 due to messy unistalls and a few ridiculous DRMs on the laptop.

You guys really need to cut the crap with this "allowed" stuff. Windows is their product, they can put whatever they want on it. ;)

Also, be a man! And use DirectX for Windows, and OpenGL for Mac, like what Blizzard does. :p

It will be best if Microsoft becomes a big player in selling games. Competition brings better quality services. Also, being able to download my games using just my Windows Live account would be awesome. :p

Most of the video seems to obsess over people going insane with Facebook etc. A company whose founder wants every internet user tracked Big Brother style through a single registered identity rather then what has been status quo.

That says enough in of itself for me.

OpenGL 4.1, aka current, is a year newer then DirectX 11. There's been a lag in implementation due to patent trolling issues, but that doesn't makes it a "older standard."

There's room for criticisms regarding it's approach and the Microsoft approach, but not continuing development isn't one of them.

XBox which might as well be just written as DirectXBox, as that is what the name is taken from, and pressure of publishers on devs for multiplatform are not some minor thing you can ignore here.

I could note I saw an article with the opposite bias from Tom's Hardware here where Developers were raging against being forced by the Publishers to constrain themselves to DirectX versus getting more direct access to the hardware and how they felt it was limiting them and making things look the same. Ergo they wanted the API to get out of their way with prepared feature packages and get into the guts of thing, which is more OpenXL's (to steal the convention) territory then DirectX's, if accurate.

This is all the more polarized by the Tom's Hardware article's obsession with prepared feature packages to the point actual API related functionality may as well not exist in their worldview.

The EU among numerous other governmental bodies disagree with you, as does the fact Microsoft is not allowed to lock out the OpenGL, OpenAL, or OpenCL APIs.

The unholy union of what has become of Atari and Davidson's children is nothing to look up to.

What's with the "if"? You've never heard of Halo or the XBox?

They bought Bungie a long time ago and the only reason Bungie didn't suffer the fate of the rest is the FASA guys literally stepped up and saved their undeserving hides. Else it would have been just like what happened to Mechwarrior 4, Fury^3, Flight Simulator, etc. Even then it doesn't sound like the FASA guys really succeeded in saving Bungie the end so much as slowing down the process.

What cave have you been living in that you think Microsoft isn't a big player?

From an economic standpoint, their reasoning is sound. People buy things to increase their satisfaction, and theoretically-speaking, the more you buy, the happier you become.

this is Microsoft in a nutshell

they are basically saying: "You will buy whatever WE will tell you to buy and you WILL like it"

that line of "Buying things enhances my gaming experience" makes me want to vomit

I can whine all day about how people who buy virtual dresses are stupid and how Farmville is an unenjoyable leeching device, but at the end of the day people support and love this stuff. You cannot, ever, blame companies for giving consumers what they want.

Pissed about streamlined games? Pissed about Farmville? Pissed about stupid overpowered DLC items? Pissed about social networking? Good, I am too, but none of it can be blamed on companies, ALL of it should be blamed on the massive amounts of people that love and support that.

How many times do we have to say it? Democracy doesn't work.

And yet there is no better alternative.

Now I'm sad... thanks.