[FFXI] Japanese language support for non-Japanese region clients

[rog]

If licensing and royalties were the issue then I'd expect the Japanese game to be higher in price than non-Japanese games, but this isn't the case. The Ultimate Collection is available for the same price on Steam whatever the region, and the subscription prices are both similar.

They may just be eating the cost.

It also seems a little strange that within a license they'd be able to ship all games with the IME and only have to pay royalties on the games that are likely to use them. In terms of whoever the royalties are going to, if a game is shipped with the IME, regardless of whether it'll be used or not, royalties should be due.

The code is inactive though. It has nothing to do with who is likely to use it, but rather who is able to use it.

[Aena]

I've wondered how Japanese players feel about seeing "omedetou" typed out Romanized...? I suppose it helps distinguish who has a Japanese game client from those who don't... I guess. It is true however that many NA and EU have a strong interest/much study in the Japanese language, and that there are many Japanese-Americans or Japanese immigrants here who are either 100% fluent in Japanese, or are honestly better at speaking/writing in Japanese than English. I can get by with French and limited German using characters such as é and ç, but no JP IME cuts off Japanese and amusing kigou.

I would hope people wouldn't just use the IME function to spam meaningless strings of characters, though.

[Xanthe]

I would be interested in seeing IME support added to non-Japanese clients as well. Having studied Japanese back in college it would be nice to have the opportunity to continue to exercise those skills.

[Xilk]

This is silly. There are no licenses to need to use the MS japanese IME. The only license would be: Are you using and illegal copy of windows? its part of the operating system.

There is not licensing fee holding back this functionality. It would be wonderful to have.

[oliveira]

One good reason why the US and EU POL had no IME support was the fact it was originally designed for being compatible with Windows 98. I don't think the current version of POL even boots properly on Windows 98.

Because of differences on the Windows9x software, adding IME support to POL would cause it to only work on NT based OSes as Windows 2000 or newer.

Now, regarding the PS2 version, it uses ATOK, which is a copyrighted piece of software (JustSystems, an Japanese word processor developer company owns it) and indeed they would have to pay JustSystems royalties for it.

But hey now Windows 98 is GONE and they could update the international versions of POL to make it work with IME.

As a side note IME works just fine with Final Fantasy XIV regardless of the language the game is setup as.

[Arcon]

As a side note IME works just fine with Final Fantasy XIV regardless of the language the game is setup as.

Was about to say that. In XIV it works like a charm, I hope they consider it for XI as well, they do seem to be able to implement it.

[noodles355]

I would also like to add my support for use of the IME in FFXI. Otsukaresamadeshita doesn't quite have the same ring as　お疲れ様でした after an event!

[Meyi]

Romaji is often considered "English" and is therefore ignored.

Not only that, but romaji is much more difficult to read (even as an English speaker) than kanji and hiragana.

I made a topic on this as well so I agree 100%. I would be willing to pay a small fee to help bridge the IME support.

[Alhanelem]

FFXI does not use the Windows IME because it wasn't originally developed on/for Windows. They had to use third party technology for the PS2, and this technology was unchanged in the porting to Windows. Since they didn't feel it was worth the cost, they simply disabled japanese input. And if it wasn't worth the cost then, it certainly wouldn't be now.

[oliveira]

FFXI for Windows DOES use IME when running in Japanese language. I used it myself when I could play the game. JPN PlayOnline website even offers dictionary updates (here FYI: http://www.playonline.com/home/download/dic01.html) and you load these files onto IME for having autocomplete to work on Japanese language.

The PC version was converted so it's natively running on Windows.

Like I explained before the reason for FFXI having IME removed in the English version is that Windows 98 cannot work with IME unless it's the Japanese/Chinese or Korean version. Any IME enabled application fails booting on non Asian Windows 98.