Anuj Gosalia, Development Manager for Graphics at Microsoft, described the new tech as "the beginning of a new era in graphics APIs."

He noted that developers wanted a console-like closer to the metal API; more control; predictability; consistency; advanced rendering techniques; elimination of overhead; better debugging tools, among others.

"The engineers at Microsoft and the GPU manufacturers have been looking at this for a long time, and we came up with DirectX 12," Gosalia said.

He pointed out that DirectX 12 is faster, allows more complexity, works on all Microsoft platforms (consoles, computers, tablets), and has better support tools.

For the consumer, DirectX 12 is more efficient and faster than its predecessors and is a leap ahead in graphics potential.

Hardware makers generally gave the product a thumbs-up. AMD's Raja Koduri said DirectX 12 was like "getting four generations of hardware ahead," all at once. Intel's Vice President of Platform Engineering Eric Mentzer said "This is absolutely, I think, the most significant jump in technology in a long, long time."

Nvidia said they're excited about DirectX 12 because it supports existing goals "within the framework of existing graphics APIs," without the need to fragment the community. Qualcomm loved the fact that DirectX 12 sees both improved power efficiency and performance on mobile hardware.

With a launch date of 2015, Microsoft is targeting DirectX 12 for the rumored release of "Windows 9," said analysts.

Microsoft DirectX family is a collection of APIs for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video on Microsoft platforms.