Blue is reporting that the next version of the Unreal engine will use only Direct3D, dropping support for both Glide and OpenGL.

This may seem like a strange decision, and our kooky friends at Slashdot will be working double-time with the Microsoft theories, but whatever your view of MS and Epic this is really just a case of market forecasting...

Judging by the comments I've read over on Blue's forum, people's immediate reaction to this decision is to think about how much Epic is going to lose.

Supporting Direct3D exclusively will make it much harder for Epic to release their games on Linux and the Mac, as Microsoft's proprietary API is available for neither and is never likely to be. OpenGL is available for both. This means that either Linux and the Mac are no longer a part of Epic's game plan, or there are plans to develop dedicated rendering engines for those platforms, which seems so unlikely that I think we can safely disregard it.

It also creates an interesting dichotomy between the two big boys of both gaming and licensing, with Epic supporting only Direct3D and Id Software supporting only OpenGL. (Expect a LithTech press release any time now...)

I've been doing a bit of graphics work myself recently and I can't for the life of me understand why any programmer would choose Direct3D over OpenGL. And I'm only looking at it from an ease-of-use perspective, regardless of multi-platform support. Even as an amateur, I'm sure in my own mind that John Carmack is doing things the right way - using OpenGL for graphics and DirectSound for audio. To me, at least, it makes sense.

So why is Epic going with Direct3D?

Well, one reason could be that, according to the news item over on Blue's, Epic has "direct input to Microsoft as to the development of the API". This, presumably, does not mean that Tim Sweeney gives Billy G a call every couple of weeks and asks for a new feature to be added.

Epic is no doubt providing guidance on how D3D should progress to make it more desirable for real-world development. After all, whatever programming gurus are tapping away at their keyboards in Microsoft HQ, none of them will have written a million-selling game with dozens of licensees.

So has Epic's decision been 'influenced' by Microsoft? Epic is moving towards development for Microsoft's X-Box console, and it is clearly advantageous to MS if one of the most influential game developers not only abandons both Linux and the Mac, but also publicly declares its support for Direct3D over OpenGL. Outside the hardcore gaming community, this move helps MS big time, and in return, MS will no doubt give Epic a helping hand with X-Box development.

When you look at the bottom line - because this is obviously a business decision, not a programming one - you can see that Epic is gambling on both the success of the X-Box console and the continued 'failure' of Linux and the Mac as gaming platforms.

Within just a few months of its release, X-Box games will probably be outselling PC games many times over. So ask yourself: If you were going to license a game engine, would you go with an Id engine and cross-develop for PC, Mac and Linux, or would you go with an Epic engine and develop for one less platform but sell many times more copies?

There's a lot of love for Linux out there in Coderworld, and releasing on the Mac is becoming more popular, but ultimately licensing decisions are made by biz folk, not developers, and for most of them the potential revenue from X-Box sales is going to be too good to resist. It's sad how the move towards Mac and Linux gaming is going to be turned around in a very short space of time, but as always, someone mentioned dollars and someone else was listening.