Why is Microsoft not developing a Halo-like next gen title using C#?

Question

The question might look subjective but considering Microsoft:

• Owns the Xbox 360 platform
• Owns the Windows platform
• Have their own game studio (MGS)
• Own other 3rd party developers
• Is a major publisher

makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn't push their flagship language to prove that not only you can cut down significant development time, and therefore money, but also show that you can release a next gen title where the real time interactivity doesn't suffer.

If Microsoft were to do this once, I am sure many AAA developers would jump on that wagon too.

Answer 1

You need to ask a slightly different question.

Why doesn't Microsoft rewrite it's existing highly tuned gaming engines in a completely different language.

This is hopefully a more self explanatory question.

I know virtually nothing about the gaming system code base but I certainly don't imagine it to be small. Converting anything other than a trivial application from C++ to any other managed language is a huge undertaking.

Forgetting all of the syntax differences and C++ features / hacks that can't be done in C#, with a gaming application one issue at the front of the conversation will be perf. C# is not slow but it has vastly different performance characteristics. It's almost certain that highly tuned C++ gaming code will not perform nearly as well if it's directly ported to C#. A whole new round of performance tuning would have to happen and would not be cheap.

Answer 2

Quite simply, for real-time-like performance problems such as is presented by First Person Shooters, C# isn't up for the task. Not that it's not a good language, I use it and like working with it, but the fact is that the indeterminacy introduced by the Garbage Collection in C# makes it inappropriate for games which have high performance requirements. The same would be true of Java. Only when you get to a point where you have a certain amount of excess performance available can you really do something like this; the problem really is that somebody else is going to take that extra performance, and instead of sinking it into the runtime requirements of C# (or Java, which would have similar issues), they will just make a better-looking game. Since the consumer doesn't really care what technology the game was developed with, they'll usually go with the better-looking game, which puts any games developed with C# (or Java, like I said) at a significant disadvantage.

Answer 3

Microsoft has a platform like this, called XNA, that they have been developing for the past three years. There are a number of proofs of concept, starter kits, and other resources for hobbyist developers and AAA studios.

XNA enables all kinds of developers to use their existing C# skills and the power of the Xbox 360 / Windows to build games for either / both platforms. They haven't developed a commercial game themselves using the platform yet, but there have been a number of pretty cool projects to use XNA already.

Take a look at some of the games that have been created using XNA.

Also, for the comments about C#'s performance, you might be interested in a forum discussion on the topic. It's definitely fast enough for many games; in fact, XNA's execution engine on the Xbox is optimized in a number of ways for game development scenarios and at reducing the cost of garbage collection (I have no source to cite, but I worked as an intern on the .NET execution engine for the Xbox 360).

Answer 4

Actually, if you look at the way things are, MS doesn't have nearly as much involvement in game studios. Bungie is now a semi-independant entity, they shuttered Ensemble ( Age of Empires, Halo Wars ) for who knows what reason... they shut down the Flight Simulator group, they let their exclusivity with Bioware ( Dragon Age, Baldurs Gate, NWN ) and Bizarre ( Project Gotham Racing ) go and they shut down FASA Interactive ( Shadowrun ). At this point, what do they have really have in house? All I can think of is.... Rare and Lionhead.

As to why didn't they make AAA titles with C#. I imagine a big chunk of it was legacy issues. PGR, Forza, Age of Empires, Halo, Flight Sim, pretty much every game they made was an iteration of a previous series, so would have already had substantial investments in existing infrastructures.

That leaves 3rd parties. Why wouldn't third parties use C#? That easy, its not available on Wii or PS3.

Answer 5

First, XNA wouldn't be an option. It is made with the goal of abstracting away the differences between the PC and 360. A high-performance game can't do that. It has to exploit the differences. Where the 360 shines, the performance has to be leveraged. Where it sucks, workarounds have to be developed. And vice versa for the PC.

That's also why other DirectX wrappers exist (SlimDX comes to mind as a much more direct D3D wrapper).

As for managed code in general, several problems come to mind:

• They have a large codebase already that they'd like to keep using. The way to cut down on development time is not to throw everything out the window and start over from scratch in another language.
• Most game studios still have some autonomy, even if they're owned by Microsoft. If they prefer to write their game in C++, can Microsoft overrule it? Would it be a good idea to do so? It would certainly piss off the developers, and pissed off developers aren't usually a good thing.
• Performance: Yes, C# and .NET performs very well on PC, but on consoles, it's a different story. It uses the .NET CF which, among other things, has a terribly primitive garbage collector. Its JIT compiler frankly sucks. .NETCF is not designed to outperform well-tuned native code.
• Control: The way you usually write AAA console games is to exploit everything the console has to offer. Every byte of memory should be more or less accounted for, every CPU cycle used. Managed code is simply less predictable. When does the GC run? How much memory is in use at any given time? We don't know. Consoles only have very limited amounts of memory. (The 360 has 512MB iirc. That's not much for a modern game, and it is only possible to make games like Halo 3 if you know exactly who's using how much of that memory).
• Most features on the 360 are simply not exposed to .NET. Many hardware features require either C++ interop or assembler to exploit.

When that is said, using .NET for a high-profile PC game would work a lot better. The full .NET framework has much better performance characteristics, and the available hardware on a PC is going to vary anyway, so tight control over the exact memory usage is less critical.

But ultimately, why would they do this? It'd be a big risk, it'd require a lot of code rewriting, and what exactly are they trying to prove? Most studios make cross-platform games, and for them, .NET is not an option no matter how awesome it is. They want to be able to run their code on the PS3 as well, or the Wii, or....

Answer 6

Similar question and similar answers... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/783238/why-windows-7-isnt-written-in-c

Answer 7

The .NET framework in general is not designed for game development. .NET's intended audience is primarily business applications (I know it can be used for a lot more but hang with the abstract for a minute).

When you are writing games, you want a language that let's you get as intimate as possible with the hardware. C++ and Assembly are classical examples where you can squeeze every last ounce of performance from a processor, GPU, and graphics library.

The .NET framework was not developed with that kind of control in mind. .NET is suited for building applications quickly in a very expressive manner - not necessarily to drive the minute details of a high-performance GPU.