I believe I also read at some point that the rumor is it will use Vulkan. I haven’t heard anything about it using Android though honestly I’m very worried about the next Nintendo. After some initial excitement everything I’ve read since makes it sound like there’s a good chance it could be another Wii U dud. We’ll find out at E3 in a few months.
HA! I’ve never heard that theory. People think it will actually use Android? XD
No, this comes from the fact that Nintendo quietly joined Khronos midway through Vulkan development. We know Nintendo is not a fan of OpenGL, so we’re all left wondering why they joined.
By the way MoltenVK is likely going to cost a licensing fee, they already charge for MoltenGL, so I don’t really consider that a viable alternative for OSX and iOS.
I know. I’m more curious as to what kind of performance it achieves. We can all sort of sit back and watch them attempt it before investing in some kind of libre solution. Does anyone know how well MoltenGL performs?
Yup! It’s not… completely… bonker… OUYA!
Oh. Right.
It’s just that Vulkan makes a ton of sense on the NX if one believes Nintendo will use Linux or Android as the basis for their OS, and sounds exceedingly un-Nintendo like (standards? What are those?) otherwise.
We can always hope for change, though. Just like we can hope for Wii U sales to pick up! Right?..
I’m sure you’ve seen this:
or
Unreal Engine guys seem optimistic about Vulcan.
That’s because they have the resources to wait until the shader compiler situation gets better or even fix it themselves if they so desire 
. I would feel the same way if we were Epic.
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My understanding isn’t that Nintendo (or Sony or anyone else) hates standards; it’s that the standards never solved the problems they had. Ever since Vulkan came out, I’ve learned a lot about how graphics hardware actually works, and I’m left wondering how OpenGL ever worked at all. The poor driver authors have to write inordinate amounts of code that guess what needs to happen to run optimally (in addition to all the resource tracking, validation, etc.).
Vulkan changes the status quo by being an API the describes the render process ahead of time in its entirety. So, any given hardware/driver is able to look at the pipeline, make decisions about how to run it optimally, and prepare a corresponding native pipeline with (hopefully) zero guesses/heuristics. That’s what gives me hope about Nintendo and other hardware makers adopting standardized APIs for once in their lives.
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This just came in…
“Vulkan Videos From This Week’s GDC 2016 Conference”
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vulkan-API-GDC-2016-Videos
Have not watched them, figured I’d link it as it is probably relevant to the conversation.
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Well, for what it’s worth, I’m for DX12.
Here’s hoping, but I have a hunch that your resources will grow to allow you guys to do the stuff that you feel are also important. 
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I wish I could be as optimistic (sure, Sony and Microsoft I’ll buy), but I’m still not convinced that Nintendo has realized that they’re the one that needs to be courting third parties yet. The NX rumours aren’t making me feel any better about my inevitable purchase (because, dammit, I’m an addict and I need my fix).
Specifically, the rumors that even long-standing partner studios haven’t heard anything solid about the NX yet.
But at least it sounds like they’re looking into standards for once.
Why else would they join the committee? I know this is Nintendo we’re talking about, but at this stage, I’d be shocked if Vulkan was not the primary graphics API on NX.
Nintendo has a direct line to your wallet too? #Smash4Life
Nintendo, you suck and do everything wrong! … I’ll take 3 copies of Zelda, please.
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Asking why Nintendo does things is the first step toward madness. I mean, why did they spend all of that money and time on the game pad only to support it as poorly as 3rd parties? You’d think at least they would have had some game ideas for it!
I’m trying so very, very, very hard not to drop $80 on Twilight Princess. Again. I mean, it’s sitting RIGHT THERE on my shelf already, but… But…
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Too many good points in this thread and too little time to address all that would deserve to be adressed, so instead i am just going to drop my opinion on the point i care the most about:
I do absolutely NOT see backwards compatibility as something unimportant, or as something that should be given up lightly.
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Agreed.
Also, the promise of having the game work under Win7 is not something to be broken lightly either.
So far, the best option seems to stick with D3D11, in my opinion. Unless there’s a major shift from the 50%+ users from Win7 to Win10, or a performance improvement in Vulkan.
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Not being a tech geek, I was wondering if there will be a lot more work switching over once the game has neared completion as opposed to now?
Yes there will be more work however the tradeoff is that we’d be more likely to be able to afford that work.
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I personally wait a few months, if Nintendo, Valve and Google are serious about Vulkan and about supporting it then they will surely throw resources and personnel at fixing the most obvious problems with Vulkan, if the solution don’t look like appearing after a few months, choose DX12 and leave support for Vulkan for the future when it big commercial supporters pull their fingers out and start sorting out issues with Vulkan.
Apparently Vulkan was going to be use for Marshmallow but it wasn’t ready in time. I be pretty surprise if Android N doesn’t come with Vulkan.
Nintendo, haven’t got a clue, their strategy makes no sense to me at the best of times, sometimes I think it a company that just give up competing with everyone else in the industry and just does it own thing. Which is perfectly fine but not exactly profitable strategy.
Valve their strategy make perfect sense to me, it just a crap strategy that isn’t going to work but it does demonstrate the company is run and control by geeks who thinks the general public is exactly like them.
My wife drives by Nintendo everyday. I’ll get her to stop in and ask WTF are they doing - but in a very polite, passive sort of way.
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It is not a very good idea to base your whole judgement on only one game that is not even optimized.
Let’s see the results on the Source 2 Engine: https://youtu.be/xXyZ4YaktyU?t=1h33m25s
Vulkan is absolutely crushing DX9/OpenGL/DX11. Valve is not even looking to port their engine to DX12 because Vulkan is all they need.
Just wait until Unreal Engine 4 supports Vulkan (a matter of weeks) and the Ashes of Singularity port is available. DirectX 12 is not relevant anymore.