Quote Originally Posted by Arkant View Post
What is possible for this game if they removed PS2 Support... Is it only the PS2 holding it back, or is there out dated code doing it? Could we see better graphics or whole new continents? Does anyone really know?
While the PS2 isn't the main thing holding FFXI back (SE's stubbornness in not updating FFXI gradually over time for example), it is the major thing holding FFXI back, in both hardware and more importantly, symbolism.

The PS2 is currently more of a symbol of what SE desires for this game. When SE desires for this game to have long term survival over focusing on a probably unsavable game like FFXIV, the PS2 will be the first thing to go, even if it is gradually with a well thought out depreciation plan.
Personally, I think SE should announce that FFXIV will be made into a single player game, and develop it. Players who paid for FFXIV will get the game's single player version, and a year subscription or something like that for FFXI. Then they should announce that FFXI will be updated, mainly in content over a long period. This would happen over the course of a few expansions, and the first one would not be available for the PS2, but the game would still support the PS2 for a while. After a year or two of transition, the next expansion would come out, and the PS2 would be out the door.

On the hardware side, the PS2 holds the game back in two major ways, and a third lesser way.
  1. Hard Drive space.
  2. RAM
  3. Graphical Processing Power

If we had more hard drive space, we could definitely have a new expansion with a new continent. At the current time, doing this would take a lot of work, but with more hard drive space, this would be more possible. On the hard drive front, the Xbox 360 version and possibly the PC version also have risks in this regard, since some 360 users may be on a 20GB hard drive (and would either need to upgrade or lose the hard drive to FFXI only, and even then this would only be temporary), and some PC users may have limited space (easier to upgrade however).

On the RAM front, eliminating the PS2 would bring definite gains, but unless we plan on upgrading the graphics (which would require a bigger revamp of code and definitely more hard drive space) universally, it would mainly be a way to add more gear, items, have more NPCs and objects in zones, and have more auto translate phrases. On the graphics front however, SE could just release a high definition pack for PC users only if they really wanted to, but even this might require some major coding work.

On the graphical front, unless improved graphics were optional, this might alienate some lower end PCs and make the game harder to run so smoothly on older hardware. Personally, I think that graphics are the least important part of moving this game forward, but it is an option some people may want. Still, this would require the most coding work - I'm not looking for a new game, just new expansions, and maybe for PC users, a high resolution texture pack.