There's a limited amount of people on staff, and the people who work specifically on rendering the game's graphics (and by extension the very core framework of the engine) are usually limited and highly specialised. DX12 is new, there's no many people who know how to take advantage of it, and Turn10 is on Microsoft's money.
Again, yes it's easier to focus on DX12 alone. That doesn't make it okay to ignore DX11 entirely. Nothing you said is preventing them from spending a quarter of the time that they spend on the DX12 version to develop a DX11 version. You can still reuse most of the code and cut out incompatible or unnecessary features to save time. Of course it would be a challenge, but that's the norm for game programming.
Not really, though. Forza 6 would loving die on launch if it didn't have anything to compete with Project: CARS and Driveclub. Being the first real DirectX 12 game is a major selling point, but it means the team need to spend time digging into the documentation to find all of the really amazing stuff they can show off.
I'm not saying they should hobble their DX12 work. It's good work. But spending time to make it work and look decent on DX11 brings in more customers. It's extremely basic, the more customers you get the better. Having something that's nearly as good graphics-wise as the DX12 version is a hell of a lot better than having
none at all.Financial:
-> Pushes Windows 10
-> Pushes DirectX 12
-> Pushes Windows Store
User
-> The chance to experience a well developed DirectX 12 game and benchmark performance
-> Xbox Exclusives now coming to the Windows platform, and Xbox exclusives are generally coded using one specific type of renderer
-> Something different to the other racing games listed above
Financial:
-> Alienate half of your potential userbase, as a result halve your profits when you could have spent a quarter of the time that you spent on DX12 on DX11 and significantly increased profits
-> Create future distaste for your brand and products by misguidedly restricting the OS you can play on, lowering profits in the future as well
User:
-> Alienate people who don't want to upgrade their OS for legitimate reasons
-> No longer able to enjoy the game they want to play because of greedy decisions
-> Forced to use products and technology that they don't want or need
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