The Mac launch for MMO Final Fantasy XIV hasn’t been smooth sailing for Square Enix as they’ve now pulled it from sale after serious technical problems have crippled the game. They are also issuing refunds to owners.
Compounding the issue, Square also released the wrong system requirements before launch. Director Naoki Yoshida has apologised and accepted ”sole responsibility” for letting the Mac version release.
Full refunds are offered especially after the wrong system requirements got posted, as many wouldn’t have bought it because of the MMO’s actual demands. Until the disaster has been fixed and accurate requirements listed, Square will keep the Mac version from sale.
”While the development and operations teams, as well as our entire company, were involved in this mistake, it was I who ultimately made the decision to release the Mac version under these circumstances and therefore bear sole responsibility, and I sincerely apologise to you all,” the game director posted on the official forum.
”Because of this situation, many of you purchased a product which your Mac hardware could not run at even the minimum system requirements, resulting in insufficient performance, for which many of you have expressed your dissatisfaction. Had we provided accurate information beforehand, I know many of you would not have purchased the Mac version, which is why we decided to offer full refunds. Once again, I apologise.”
Why has this been such a disaster for Mac users?
The development team used middleware to ‘convert’ Final Fantasy XIV’s native DirectX architecture over to OpenGL. Yoshida-san admits this was over cost of development. ”Very few games are sold for Mac systems,” he said, ”and the prevailing opinion is that the majority of Mac users aren’t interested in games. This results in an extremely high risk for development.”
He elaborated that even if the team had built Final Fantasy XIV to work natively with OpenGL ”it would be exceedingly difficult to provide a level of performance that matched that of a system using DirectX”. The team will continue to work on the Mac version.
”With the adoption of DirectX11 for Mac, and the replacement of OpenGL with a new graphics API in Apple’s next OS, the fundamental gap in current performance issues may soon be eliminated,” he offered as a glimmer of hope for Mac gamers.
Final Fantasy XIV released June 23rd on Mac.
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