[pcwalton]

That's not how it works. Most games and apps are just fine with leaving some amount of graphics performance on the table. That's why engines like Unity are so popular: sure, you could always go a bit faster writing your own engine, but in most cases it isn't worth the trouble. Likewise, with graphics APIs, you have to weigh the significant benefits of greater compatibility against the benefits of using vendor-specific extensions. For most apps, the benefits of going wild with extensions are marginal, while the obvious drawbacks are significant.

I think a lot of people have mistaken ideas about how performance sensitive games are. They care about performance, but not so much that it trumps all other considerations. Games really aren't that different from other apps.

[microcolonel]

> I think a lot of people have mistaken ideas about how performance sensitive games are. They care about performance, but not so much that it trumps all other considerations. Games really aren't that different from other apps.

Beyond that, even where performance is the priority, a generic performance win is usually more interesting unless the IHV is buying the developer time.

[pjmlp]

It is not going wild with extensions, rather having to deal with extensions for feature X, because everyone does it differently, and when X becomes part of the core, it is just another additional path, as naturally not all GPU drivers do update to the version that has X in the core.

And even then, there are the workarounds to deal with hardware or driver specific bugs.