totaly true but recent change look like a 360° change

I agree, they are in exactly the same position as before. Pigdog phatasses is not far off lol

Windows RT is **** and the Pro is about £300 too expensive, you can get a Laptop for £300, half the price of this frigging thing.

I'm 100% sure Mantle forced MS to respond with DX12. Yes there is OpenGL but it never materialized for end users. On the other hand Mantle being released with real world applications is a much much bigger threat because game developers see it working and can immediately begin support for the new API. DX12 was only purportedly shown at the tech demo... at 60 fps on a PC with a GTX Titan Black... when the game is actually a Xbox console exclusive. Nowhere in the tech demo did it prove it was DX12 and not DX11 running the game. And the fun fact is, having known MS obviously ditched PC gaming, would have no real incentive to develop a low level API because of the comparatively limited gains to be had on consoles. It would have been better of stunting development of DX to convince people the Xbone is the 'absolute best gaming machine' which is where all their gaming effort is at. It was only with the release of Mantle that they saw something to lose, which sent MS scrambling to announce a response so they can cover up their un-development in DX and fight off Mantle from stealing a piece of the pie.

OpenGL is being materialized on every Android phone/tablet there is + now you have AndroidTV and whatnot. That's definitely taking pie from MS. What did Microsoft lose with Mantle? AMD's own whitepaper states that they literally designed it to port easily to DX12. Plus it's Windows only at the moment so what exactly is MS losing here? Even AMD's development tools all ship with VS plugins. It's not like Microsoft makes money on DirectX and it's not like all these new games will use Mantle on the consoles or developers forfeit 50% of the market (nvidia) so what exactly is the threat?

The problem with surface is that is too expensive. Giving almost 1000€ for a tablet with a keyboard is just too much!!! Specially when you can buy something like the new Asus Transformer that does everything the surface does at half price! Of course it uses an Atom instead of a core I5/I7 but for the purpose of the gear it´s more than enough.

Microsoft are trying to hard to be like Apple. They have stopped focus on their software to produce some terrible pieces of hardware. Apple reinvented the music industry with the Ipod, good quality product extortionate price but marketed like it was the dogs bollocks! And it worked! Microsoft created the Zune... terrible product, hideous design, terrible marketing. After the Ipod success, apple launched new line of MacBooks, again extortionate prices, yet marketed very very well. Microsoft release Surface, a clunky, underpowered (for the low end version) piece of crap with a clip on keyboard, and a kickstand. When your WHOLE marketing campaign comes down to a few adverts of people "clicking" the kickstand open is ALL you have to show of a product then you know its a fail!! Apple releases the Iphone and reinvents the smart phone industry (NOT creates, but gives it a big boost!) again low to mid range specs, yet marketed very very very very well and with a top end price tag well cause you know it has that apple logo on the back. Microsoft... thinking they are clever, buy out Nokia and we focus on the software... GREAT! This should work... right.... anyone? Well no because yet again they try to be like Apple yet someone at Microsoft thinks a rainbow coloured mirage of squares is appealing to scroll through!!! No Microsoft... just NO! Stop trying to be like Apple and just go back to releasing OS's every four years not two! We all know we skip one and then jump on one. Windows 95 skip, 98 buy, ME skip, XP buy, Vista skip, 7 buy, 8 skip, 9 buy.... etc, etc.

The threat of shareholders and reputational response when they see a new API eat away at the long standing king of graphics API, on the PC where ridiculous GPUs run wild and where people actually give a **** about graphic performance. What you think DX actually has a serious stake on mobile devices? It was originally made for PC. Do people using their handphones/tablets actually care about the graphics API being used? Are they going to be playing Forza 5 and brag about the fps? MS has bigger things to worry about than mobile API (their un-popular windows mobile devices)

There is absolutely no way shaderholders care about something as minor as DX. You want to know what they care about? The ongoing threat Android, in general, poses on the Microsoft ecosystem. Android constantly eats away the long standing king of software, Microsoft itself. Mantle doesn't do anything. It doesn't even chip away. Name one game that's Mantle only. You can't because there are none. Until Mantle is supported on something other than Windows, PC and AMD it will never eat away DX at all, period. The fact is android is scaling quickly into the PC market. More and more people are not buying PCs and just buying Android tablets and phones (iPads too). Android consoles are becoming a thing. The gaming market, both console and PC is huge and Android is starting to take a bite out of that. Valve is pushing for things like the steambox. OpenGL is what takes a bite out of Microsoft's profits not Mantle. If anything I'd argue that Mantle helps Microsoft. It helps lock developers onto the Windows platform, as it's only supported by Windows thus far. It was designed to be ported quickly to DX12. And it provides a boost in performance to windows machines only. Anyway this is getting off topic.

I'd be very very interested in the next set of figures as the Surface 3 is shipping vast numbers over it's predecessors. Not every product is successful at first.

This thread kind of went to ****.... The biggest hindrances to Surface sales are price and WindowsRT. When you overprice a product, people don't buy it. When your product confuses consumers, they don't buy it.

I'm 100% sure Mantle forced MS to respond with DX12.

DX12 was already in development when Mantle was announced.....

It is absolutely because of the pricing. You can get an Android tablet for far less that does everything that the Surface does except use MS Office.

Windows RT is **** and the Pro is about £300 too expensive, you can get a Laptop for £300, half the price of this frigging thing.

A bit harshly stated but this is what it comes down too. I would've bought a surface Pro if the pricing was right, but it isn't. The RT is to limiting imo. The Pro however is nice but at its price point, one might as well get a nice 13 inch laptop that can offer way more.