If you consider 60% of Android users, and 0% of iOS users, "widely supported," sure. That's less than half of mobile phones in use right now, making Vulkan the odd-one-out on mobile as well. You certainly can't build a mobile app right now that only uses Vulkan without cutting out huge parts of your audience.
> So Apple, which doesn't sell a console, is absolutely breaking from the pack in the markets they target.
Apple wants the same API on all of their devices, and I can't blame them. They are the odd-ones-out in Desktop only.
But does that really matter? If you are making a game only for Desktop, namely Windows, and weren't going to just use DirectX for some reason, it does (which I think, nowadays, is a rare situation). But if you are targeting any game consoles, or any mobile phones, you're adding multiple graphics APIs anyway and Metal is just another one.
> If you consider 60% of Android users, and 0% of iOS users, "widely supported," sure.
But that's what we're talking about, if it weren't for Apple Vulkan would be a near ubiquitous desktop and mobile API. Apple is the one standing in the way of that.
If Vulkan were a near ubiquitous mobile and desktop API, _maybe_ the console vendors would be more willing to tolerate it.
Microsoft can't be expected to just give up the gatekeeping that is DirectX on their own (well, maaaybe if antitrust was more effective ??).
Sony only cares about their console(s), so they prefer to focus on optimization rather than compatibility. (While Nintendo cares more about gameplay than graphics.)
Isn't that 40% of Android devices old / very cheap ?
Apple is one of the biggest (and especially, most profitable) companies in the world, and with great power comes...
So "Microsoft can't be expected", "Sony doesn't care" but we should only blame Apple. Gotcha.
Because only Apple has the power and hence the responsibility, not the tiny helpless companies Microsoft and Sony (~99% of consoles, 76% of desktop).
Edit: don't forget, Apple absolutely must support Vulkan (and others don't) because Metal is proprietary and non-cross-platform (just like any other graphics API on all major platforms) even though Vulkan appeared two years later than Metal (but neither Microsoft nor Sony are expected to drop their APIs which also appeared earlier than Vulkan).
If you consider 60% of Android users, and 0% of iOS users, "widely supported," sure. That's less than half of mobile phones in use right now, making Vulkan the odd-one-out on mobile as well. You certainly can't build a mobile app right now that only uses Vulkan without cutting out huge parts of your audience.
> So Apple, which doesn't sell a console, is absolutely breaking from the pack in the markets they target.
Apple wants the same API on all of their devices, and I can't blame them. They are the odd-ones-out in Desktop only.
But does that really matter? If you are making a game only for Desktop, namely Windows, and weren't going to just use DirectX for some reason, it does (which I think, nowadays, is a rare situation). But if you are targeting any game consoles, or any mobile phones, you're adding multiple graphics APIs anyway and Metal is just another one.