There's been a lot of speculation about the use of 3d graphics APIs on Microsoft's upcoming console machine, the X-Box, which by now everyone knows Microsoft bought Bungie to make Halo for.

With Microsoft's tendencies to try and push its own APIs like DirectX over those of competitors, like SGI's OpenGL, there have been some suggestions that the X-Box might be DirectX only, and that this might hinder a Macintosh version of Halo should Bungie decide to actually release one.

Id Software's John Carmack weighed in awhile ago that he believed NVidia would be providing OpenGL on the X-Box, and this month's edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal has confirmation in the form of an article by Michael Abrash, who is working for Microsoft on the X-Box. In it he says:

The bottom line is that Xbox is a well-balanced graphics system that will generally be capable of approaching the specs being claimed for it. Capable is not the same as easy -- this level of performance will require exemplary programming, taking full advantage of the fact that Xbox is a fixed platform to which code can be carefully tuned. Microsoft will encourage this by providing plenty of sample code and documentation showing how to push the hardware to its limits, via a version of DirectX 8 optimized and extended to support every feature of Xbox. For those who prefer OpenGL, NVIDIA will provide a fully Xbox-enhanced version.

So there it is. OpenGL will be on the X-Box for those who want it.