I gues that's fair enough, although you bought those digital titles with your eyes open and the possibility they'd be stuck on your console - not literally, not unless you also have a Wii U
Does anyone here know if different levels of PSN/XBL titles are allowed different levels of hardware access? Eg does an XBLA/PSn title need to stick with higher level drivers?
Oh I know and agree I accepted any risk when I purchased the content. However again, I don't really care about BC. =P
I do think some consumers would be a bit more hesitant to purchase digital content next generation if they lose everything from this Gen.
Keep reading that thread, there were denials from EA Canada devs later on about direct GPU calls being passable and confirmed in a Eurogamer article.
Microsoft published the Trials HD games so it's possible RedLynx was given a 1st party exception though. Or it may be a recent policy change, but it was certainly a no go a couple years back.
You're mistaken. Yes, there were tweets from 3 years ago but just because some thing are forced through the API, that doesn't mean everything is. You don't know what changes have been made since those tweets. The API at a time was more restrictive [than the 360] on the PS3 in the beginning. Updates such as PSGL opened the hardware up. It seems like you're hanging on that article while ignoring posts such as the one below:
You use some form of API regardless of the console. Whether it's DirectX, libGCM or whatever else. On consoles these APIs are super thin and penalties are close to none (and you learn where they are not minuscule). There's no "coding to the metal" anymore, it's pretty much a myth. You'd have to build some reasonable layer on top of the "metal" anyways so instead of reinventing the wheel (and making many, many mistakes) you use the API provided. The only thing common between DirectX on Xbox 360 and PC is the look and feel of the API, but the core principals are different. There's no DXGI driver below because you don't need any abstraction for various hardware. There's no dynamic linking to the DLL - it's a static lib AFAIK and since you use WPO unneeded parts are stripped and stuff gets inlined nicely where possible. With PGO you get even more improvements. Your friend probably saw an API and assumed it's the same stack Windows has. It isn't.
There are plenty of games that use low level coding when coding for the vmx units as it's the best way to gain performance. However no matter what platform you're developing for, you'll have various levels of access to the hardware depending on what you're coding for.