DirectX creator Engstrom dies aged 55.
DirectX creator Eric Engstrom has sadly passed away at the age of 55, following a career which helped to shape the gaming industry.
Engstrom created the DirectX gaming APIs in 1994 – alongside Alex St. John and Craig Eisler – to simplify Windows game development and make it the stellar platform it remains today.
The APIs were originally developed for Windows 95. Game developers at the time were reporting they preferred MS-DOS for its low overhead and found Windows 3.1 too difficult to develop games for—hence why DirectX was born (originally called the Manhattan Project, in relation to the WWII effort of the same name.)
Microsoft’s management almost ditched the project and wrote off Windows as a gaming platform. Fortunately, they were convinced otherwise.
Engstrom and his team presented the first DirectX APIs at the 1995 Game Developers Conference.
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