Waiiiit a second!?

A long time ago, in game years, an MMO came to the PS2, FFXI. At the time, the graphics were decent and gave non-pc users the ability to play FFXI. However, several years later SE wanted to upgrade to the PS3...

" 'Initially we were in talks with a representative from Sony [to achieve this], but it appears that that person quit,' said FFXI producer Hiromichi Tanaka, inducing laughter from the rest of the team. Tanaka also explained why it's a little more complicated to make the PS2 version work than, say, simply releasing some sort of patch or update for the PS3." - 1up.com

(I remember an episode of either LBR, Limit Break Radio, or Aetheryte Radio talking about this also. Love you guys btw!)

Anyway, that was that.

So, I understand that the graphics look great now. I also know that the xbox720 is due out in the next few years.
My question of speculation is what happens in another six years or so? Yes, first we have to get there, lewl, however, presuming that FFXIV will be around and doing decent after all the remodeling now and in the future, what happens when it needs a graphics upgrade? An MMO called Mortal online had a huge graphics overhaul and looks great in comparison to what it was and for who their dev team is. Aion also had a graphics upgrade patch of some sort.

Is FFXIV, like its predecessor, going to be tied to it's current consoles and how much can it be upgraded on these systems after expansions, updates, and players going to the newer gen consoles?

(Yes, space shouldn't be an issue)

I'd imagine any large graphical upgrades will be passed on to the console version for as much as the console will allow. If next-gen consoles are released SE will probably work on getting FFXIV released on that too with the improved graphics (Like they did with FFXI on xbox360).

At least that's my take on it, I heard a similar question in regards to CCP's Dust 514 game which is an FPS MMO linked directly to Eve Online, and people asked "what about when the PS4 comes out?" and CCP replied "well... we'll put it on that too."

For a game as massive as XIV will eventually be? Probably.

At best we might see new rendering features/options/upgraded shaders and zone redesigns/town redesigns in 4-8 years.

With a game like this I can't see SE ever re-drawing the textures at a higher resolution or adding more polygons to the models. (Really that shouldn't be a problem for awhile though, the amount of polygons in XIV models is insane.)

I'm also pessimistic about the future of game design. With the coming console generation, depending on their power and also how the PC market evolved with the digital distribution boom. I have a fear that another video game crash is going to happen soon with the sharp prices involved in developing and selling both the hardware and software. That is too assume that games are all held to the near AAA rule of "push the hardware as far as it goes then develop clever programming to push it further."

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Originally Posted by Konachibi

I'd imagine any large graphical upgrades will be passed on to the console version for as much as the console will allow. If next-gen consoles are released SE will probably work on getting FFXIV released on that too with the improved graphics (Like they did with FFXI on xbox360).

At least that's my take on it, I heard a similar question in regards to CCP's Dust 514 game which is an FPS MMO linked directly to Eve Online, and people asked "what about when the PS4 comes out?" and CCP replied "well... we'll put it on that too."

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The 360 version had little to no improvement over the PC version. Actually it was basically a buggy poorly down port of the PC version set to display at predefined resolutions depending on what your display output was set to in the 360 system configuration. Texture data/polygon counts remained the same and the only thing I can think of that "improved" was they claimed it had surround sound I believe which both the PS2 and PC version never supported.

Oh.

Last time I played FFXI the guy in charge of the LS I joined kept adamantly telling me that the xbox360 version was graphically superior to the PC version. I laughed at him and told him he was talking bull and that PC would always stand above consoles regardless but he seemed quite blind to that.

Still I would have expected the 360 version to at least look better than the PS2 version surely?

Also from what I remember SE's plan when they made FFXIV look like this was so that at the moment it's quite demanding for a computer, where as a few years down the line it won't be totally "WOW AMAZIN!" like it is now but it'll still look good. Best way to make a games graphics age well is to make it look awesome to begin with, then it takes longer to look dated ;)

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Originally Posted by Darkshade

For a game as massive as XIV will eventually be? Probably.

At best we might see new rendering features/options/upgraded shaders and zone redesigns/town redesigns in 4-8 years.

With a game like this I can't see SE ever re-drawing the textures at a higher resolution or adding more polygons to the models. (Really that shouldn't be a problem for awhile though, the amount of polygons in XIV models is insane.)

I'm also pessimistic about the future of game design. With the coming console generation, depending on their power and also how the PC market evolved with the digital distribution boom. I have a fear that another video game crash is going to happen soon with the sharp prices involved in developing and selling both the hardware and software. That is too assume that games are all held to the near AAA rule of "push the hardware as far as it goes then develop clever programming to push it further."



The 360 version had little to no improvement over the PC version. Actually it was basically a buggy poorly down port of the PC version set to display at predefined resolutions depending on what your display output was set to in the 360 system configuration. Texture data/polygon counts remained the same and the only thing I can think of that "improved" was they claimed it had surround sound I believe which both the PS2 and PC version never supported.

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You know what pushed graphics to the max? Minecraft

http://9gag.com/gag/275108

Because you know, in eight years, FFXIV is going to look like this

http://assets.reviewcentre.com/cms//...4043-jpg-1.jpg

Hey now, Minecraft's aesthetic is that is trying to be a simple 8 bit game in a 3D world. At least that's how I feel.

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Originally Posted by Konachibi

Oh.

Last time I played FFXI the guy in charge of the LS I joined kept adamantly telling me that the xbox360 version was graphically superior to the PC version. I laughed at him and told him he was talking bull and that PC would always stand above consoles regardless but he seemed quite blind to that.

Still I would have expected the 360 version to at least look better than the PS2 version surely?

Also from what I remember SE's plan when they made FFXIV look like this was so that at the moment it's quite demanding for a computer, where as a few years down the line it won't be totally "WOW AMAZIN!" like it is now but it'll still look good. Best way to make a games graphics age well is to make it look awesome to begin with, then it takes longer to look dated ;)

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It's a port of the PC version so it uses similar PC assets. Devs of XI claimed that the PC version had 2x sized textures, however this is mostly untrue. There are some objects / models / zones that use higher resolution textures on PC/360 but mostly they're the same textures with some having been re-sampled via software up-scaling. No additional detail is derived from that process though.

Most of XI on PC and 360' "look better" attribute is just that you have the option to render the 3D resolution at a much higher resolution than the PS2 version, also the PC version depending on your hardware might run at a constant 30FPS compared to the inconsistent frame rate of the PS2 version that often dipped as low as 12FPS.

Yes, I know :D They've supposedly sold over a million copies too. Graphics aren't everything ^^

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Originally Posted by Konachibi

Oh.

Last time I played FFXI the guy in charge of the LS I joined kept adamantly telling me that the xbox360 version was graphically superior to the PC version. I laughed at him and told him he was talking bull and that PC would always stand above consoles regardless but he seemed quite blind to that.

Still I would have expected the 360 version to at least look better than the PS2 version surely?

Also from what I remember SE's plan when they made FFXIV look like this was so that at the moment it's quite demanding for a computer, where as a few years down the line it won't be totally "WOW AMAZIN!" like it is now but it'll still look good. Best way to make a games graphics age well is to make it look awesome to begin with, then it takes longer to look dated ;)

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You are talking out of your ass. The 360 version of FF XI looks miles better than the PS2 game. It is HD for a start. It also looks better than the PC game. The PC game is old there is only so much you can do with it.

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Originally Posted by Akira_Tenshi

You are talking out of your ass. The 360 version of FF XI looks miles better than the PS2 game. It is HD for a start. It also looks better than the PC game. The PC game is old there is only so much you can do with it.

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I was quoting what the guy said to me, not what I thought. I thought he was talking out of his ass too.

Plus remember many PC graphics cards can make everything run on it to be in HD with the right settings, so the 360 version doing HD wouldn't be really make it superior to the PC version since the PC version would be able to do it too.

Please read my post carefully before replying next time ;)

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Originally Posted by Darkshade

It's a port of the PC version so it uses similar PC assets. Devs of XI claimed that the PC version had 2x sized textures, however this is mostly untrue. There are some objects / models / zones that use higher resolution textures on PC/360 but mostly they're the same textures with some having been re-sampled via software up-scaling. No additional detail is derived from that process though.

Most of XI on PC and 360' "look better" attribute is just that you have the option to render the 3D resolution at a much higher resolution than the PS2 version, also the PC version depending on your hardware might run at a constant 30FPS compared to the inconsistent frame rate of the PS2 version that often dipped as low as 12FPS.

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That's what I figured.

I do remember last time I played it seeing a summoner run past me with a Carbuncle summoned, and noticing that for some reason Carbuncle was like, graphically superior to everything else on the screen.

It was like a PS1 character surrounded by SNES graphics XD

If I turn nearly everything down on FFXIV, it's worse than snes...It actually turns into might and magic -1

Graphics aren't everything.
I've been playing the first Witcher
and i'm quite impressed with how the environments look.
They did a spectacular job on making the world seem real.
It is the enhanced edition, but it did come out in 07 I believe.
Supposedly the 2nd one's environments though are stupidly amazing.

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Originally Posted by VeranRamaden

Graphics aren't everything.
I've been playing the first Witcher
and i'm quite impressed with how the environments look.
They did a spectacular job on making the world seem real.
It is the enhanced edition, but it did come out in 07 I believe.
Supposedly the 2nd one's environments though are stupidly amazing.

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Indeed, the witcher was amazingly demanding for it's time back then. Haven't seen the second one but I heard it wasn't as good as the original.

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Originally Posted by Akira_Tenshi

You are talking out of your ass. The 360 version of FF XI looks miles better than the PS2 game. It is HD for a start. It also looks better than the PC game. The PC game is old there is only so much you can do with it.

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Sigh. I've only put about 5 years play time into XI across multiple systems. The 360 version has worse FPS than most PCs and less resolution(PC it's capable of 2048x2048) [The part that you know, makes it "HD"...] and horrible stability. When your 360 output is set to 1080i/p, XI's 3D resolution outputs at 1024x1024.

On top of that the 360 version lags almost as bad as the PS2 version, I consider it almost unplayable for anything serious, at least after you've been conditioned to the max possible FPS. So what else makes it better? It's draw distance that was supposedly marginally increased which has been increase-able for years on the PC version? I could go on but actually you know what, never mind.

Also the PC version is old so there is only so much you can do with it? What? Of the 3 systems the only system that can have it's hardware replaced or upgraded is the PC. Do you really think that they re-programmed the core of the game for 360? Better graphics from what? I guarantee you texture resolutions are exactly the same. They aren't going to draw new higher polygon models for the 360 version either. Do you know how much money and time that would cost? PC version has been able to do your 1280x720 and 1920x1080 or greater for years. The 360 is a six year old console.

10/10, you got me to reply.

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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9054


Square Enix' massively multiplayer title set to be a straight port of existing version

The version of Square Enix' massively multiplayer title Final Fantasy XI which was announced with a fanfare for Xbox 360 earlier this week will not feature any major enhancements over the existing PS2 and PC versions of the game, representatives of the firm have confirmed.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at E3, Japanese representatives of Square Enix said that the game would be "exactly the same", with the only update being the addition of HDTV resolutions. No new models or environments will be added to the game, which will run on the same servers as the PC and PS2 editions.

The company also revealed that Final Fantasy XI was originally in development for the current generation Xbox console, but that an agreement couldn't be reached with Microsoft that would allow Square Enix to implement its custom PlayOnline online gaming service on Xbox Live.

The restrictions on this have been eased significantly with the Xbox 360, the firm's spokespeople explained, and players will log into PlayOnline in order to play FFXI, not the Live service.

The team lauded the ease of development of the Xbox 360, saying that it took them just two to three months to get the game up and running on the platform, and said that it hopes to expand the audience for FFXI by moving to the new platform - especially in Europe, where this will be the first console version of the game to be made available.

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