Apple, Mac, Silicon, M1, macOS - Native Support for the next 10 years

Hello there,
I am a Mac user and have been playing FFXIV on the Mac.
As per Letter from Producer Live Part LXVIII: the goal in the next 10 years is to evolve FFXIV to: "an RPG that's fun alone or with friends.”
With yesterday announcement from Apple on March 9 regarding the final chip of M1, now they have M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra. With M1 Pro-Ultra very capable in running FFXIV.

My question is:
1. Will there be a Native ARM based FFXIV in the future/10 years for macOS like WoW has had on the very first day of M1?

I know that this is not a small project at all and not looking for a quick fix (hence the 10 year preamble), however, if/when FFXIV ever be ported natively to Mac, it'd also open up doors to the mobile platforms of the iOS and iPadOS and perhaps tvOS. (and even other ARM based OS: Android / Windows ARM).
One of the benefit I think is that, never before FFXIV would be playable on the mobile device/laptop with high efficient on power consumption. The mobile gaming industry is huge and wondering if SE/FFXIV would ever dip into that?

Would the development team think this would be done in the next 10 years as part of the "an RPG that's fun alone or with friends.” journey?


ps: I've been using the launcher from Square Enix just before Endwalker launch and then switched to XIV on Mac (xivmac.com) for better translation performance.
pps: Yoshi-P, if you ever read this, please check out the team at xivmac.com. They have been truly awesome in supporting FFXIV on Mac.
ppps: Windows users, please be kind and supportive on this. It's hard enough to game on Mac, we don't need anymore bashing. We know. But our hardware now is more and more capable especially building Apple's own Silicon. So please, be kind, supportive and stay on subject.

If a Native client was a serious consideration it would have happened by now.

On the bright side the wine wrapper route is at least a lot more viable on M1 compared to the state the game was in on older Intel Macs that were lacking discrete GPUs.

A truly native client to allow the game to run on iOS would be an interesting proposition but I just can't see it happening. It'd need considerable investment and manpower, both things that go against trends we've seen in FFXIV's development. Not to mention there's the App Store cut to contend with as well.

This is just a heads up that the launcher is DEAD for ALL MacOS users next week due to macOS update 12.3. There may not be many of us on macOS but an updated launcher will be necessary if you don't want to alienate an entire platform.

Honestly, I hope it will happen at some point. I own the game on Mac as well. While I didn't play with it for very long, it has been really useful when I didn't want to play on my desktop to do light tasks like gathering.
WoW played fairly well on Apple Silicon too, so.. hopefully.

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Originally Posted by zoeyrae89

This is just a heads up that the launcher is DEAD for ALL MacOS users next week due to macOS update 12.3. There may not be many of us on macOS but an updated launcher will be necessary if you don't want to alienate an entire platform.

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That is very true. I didn't actually think about that. Hopefully they fix it soon :(

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Originally Posted by Doragan

Honestly, I hope it will happen at some point. I own the game on Mac as well. While I didn't play with it for very long, it has been really useful when I didn't want to play on my desktop to do light tasks like gathering.
WoW played fairly well on Apple Silicon too, so.. hopefully.



That is very true. I didn't actually think about that. Hopefully they fix it soon :(

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I was watching the letters from the producers purely hoping to hear even just the word Mac mentioned but no such luck :/ Python2 is removed in 12.3 which renders the Crossover version in the native launcher a digital paperweight.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

If a Native client was a serious consideration it would have happened by now.

On the bright side the wine wrapper route is at least a lot more viable on M1 compared to the state the game was in on older Intel Macs that were lacking discrete GPUs.

A truly native client to allow the game to run on iOS would be an interesting proposition but I just can't see it happening. It'd need considerable investment and manpower, both things that go against trends we've seen in FFXIV's development. Not to mention there's the App Store cut to contend with as well.

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That is true that it would've been a serious consideration by now HAD Apple stays with Intel.
But the announcement of the move away from Intel only happened less than 2 years ago and back then, nobody knows what Silicon could do.
The first M1 was meh in running FFXIV. But now we have Pro, Max and Ultra which is very capable.

Also in the past 1.5 years, they've been fully concentrated on Endwalker.

I was just hoping that if they're looking for new players/platform or more possibility of current players to play on the run/go. I believe if they do consider mobile gaming platform, building the Native version for macOS on its Metal API would almost as easily as switching a switch to go to other iOS, iPadOS or tvOS.

As technology progresses, and if they're in for the long run like they said in their Live Letter, then perhaps they could consider the native macOS client as a stepping stone to ARM based platforms

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Originally Posted by _machina_

That is true that it would've been a serious consideration by now HAD Apple stays with Intel.
But the announcement of the move away from Intel only happened less than 2 years ago and back then, nobody knows what Silicon could do.
The first M1 was meh in running FFXIV. But now we have Pro, Max and Ultra which is very capable.

Also in the past 1.5 years, they've been fully concentrated on Endwalker.

I was just hoping that if they're looking for new players/platform or more possibility of current players to play on the run/go. I believe if they do consider mobile gaming platform, building the Native version for macOS on its Metal API would almost as easily as switching a switch to go to other iOS, iPadOS or tvOS.

As technology progresses, and if they're in for the long run like they said in their Live Letter, then perhaps they could consider the native macOS client as a stepping stone to ARM based platforms

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I’m looking forward to that Ultra. I use an M1 mini for photo and video productivity. Fantastic little machine that is silent and powerful. I use a PC for gaming, but toyed around with native M1 WoW. Ran really well. I imagine the Ultra will shred WoW if it properly allocates all video cores. I imagine the fused cores may be wonky to support like the early Zen architecture.

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Originally Posted by zoeyrae89

This is just a heads up that the launcher is DEAD for ALL MacOS users next week due to macOS update 12.3. There may not be many of us on macOS but an updated launcher will be necessary if you don't want to alienate an entire platform.

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Linux users say: Hi Welcome

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Originally Posted by Poporito_Popoto

Linux users say: Hi Welcome

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Linux isn't a supported platform unlike macOS. it dies for Mac because of the removal of Python2, not any of the Steam changes.

FFXIV isn't updated for Monterey yet right? Don't see the future developments happening at all.

Python2 hasn't been supported since 2020, and Apple recommends devs just bundle the runtime if they still need it for legacy purposes going forward, and they can always use /usr/bin/python3 in terminal. Either way SE will need to package a new update

Thankfully XIVOnMac exists though, great native launcher for macOS and you get 60fps on M1.

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Originally Posted by Onshinn

FFXIV isn't updated for Monterey yet right? Don't see the future developments happening at all.

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I don't believe so, the last update I saw was in December saying "We are running late, but End of December, we promise"

As OS X is a paid platform, SE need to get this in hand soon.

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Originally Posted by talk_show_ghost

If SE actually made a real, native mac .app the game would run like a dream.

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Assuming they do a proper implementation and use the Metal API efficiently/properly. WoW got native M1 client pretty much days after it was released. It runs overall well but like the original M1 has still memory limitations and FPS went down during any combat/mass particle effects. Bigger M1 variants handle it better but still the price tag is quite high for "moderate" performance.

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Originally Posted by Poporito_Popoto

Linux users say: Hi Welcome

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Linux doesn't technically have a FFXIV port either, it runs via Wine like the current SE Mac client or XIV on Mac :P

I'd like to see a native macOS client in the future. Blizzard have a great macOS client for World of Warcraft that runs great on pretty much all M1-based systems, there's no reason why FFXIV can't be the same

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Originally Posted by Johners

I'd like to see a native macOS client in the future. Blizzard have a great macOS client for World of Warcraft that runs great on pretty much all M1-based systems, there's no reason why FFXIV can't be the same

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I think it's more a question of can't rather than won't. Blizzard has made quite a few native Mac titles in the past. I can't think of a single native Mac title developed by Square - they likely don't have any Mac/Metal developers on hand.

I have completely lost faith on it, just like I lost faith in-game. All hope is lost.

Go recruit some of the ARM based developers from Blizzard (morale ain’t high there) or other companies or just advertise for positions.

If and when launching, just make sure you don’t launch like:
https://news.knowyourmeme.com/news/b...ng-its-fanbase

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Originally Posted by Dries_Weaver

I think it's more a question of can't rather than won't. Blizzard has made quite a few native Mac titles in the past. I can't think of a single native Mac title developed by Square - they likely don't have any Mac/Metal developers on hand.

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Oh actually I stand corrected. There are already some apps developed by SE on the App Store. FFVI, Legend of Mana, FFVII, FFV, Lara Croft GO, Hitman, etc.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

If a Native client was a serious consideration it would have happened by now.

On the bright side the wine wrapper route is at least a lot more viable on M1 compared to the state the game was in on older Intel Macs that were lacking discrete GPUs.

A truly native client to allow the game to run on iOS would be an interesting proposition but I just can't see it happening. It'd need considerable investment and manpower, both things that go against trends we've seen in FFXIV's development. Not to mention there's the App Store cut to contend with as well.

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The longterm issue with Mac support going forward with Apple Silicon hardware is that Apple has absolutely no intentions of keeping Rosetta2 around as a permanent bandaid fix for backwards compatibility. They plan on keeping it around about 5 years and we are 1.5 years so far into the Apple Silicon cycle. Once they remove Rosetta2 from MacOS any programs that never implemented native support will cease to function.

That will be more reliant on the Crossover Wine wrapper they use being fully native by then rather than the game client itself though.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

That will be more reliant on the Crossover Wine wrapper they use being fully native by then rather than the game client itself though.

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They discuss that on this blog post by the president of Codeweaver: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jra...-apple-silicon

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Originally Posted by Johners

I'd like to see a native macOS client in the future. Blizzard have a great macOS client for World of Warcraft that runs great on pretty much all M1-based systems, there's no reason why FFXIV can't be the same

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Originally Posted by Dries_Weaver

I think it's more a question of can't rather than won't. Blizzard has made quite a few native Mac titles in the past. I can't think of a single native Mac title developed by Square - they likely don't have any Mac/Metal developers on hand.

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WoW's had mac support since launch. However newer titles like Overwatch don't have a Mac client.

I'm sure SE will update the wrapper to support whatever changes are needed.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

WoW's had mac support since launch. However newer titles like Overwatch don't have a Mac client.

I'm sure SE will update the wrapper to support whatever changes are needed.

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The point was they release native ARM M1 version of WoW client pretty much few days after it went live. Some time thereafter they even released native Windows ARM version of the client.They do have regression here and there but they are quite quick to develop things and even from time to time they kill support for older hardware. For SL they even experimented with Ray Tracing.

FF14 on the other hand is still DX11 on Windows while native macOS (or Linux) version does not exist. Just some monstrosity via compatibility libraries. To have a true native client it would take quite a bit of work and it would be big enough to definitely be mentioned on the first live letter discussing next 10 years of the game and so on.

And SE few days after Gabe gave them a big free advert by playing FF14 on the Steam Deck migrated Steam players to their launcher that uses old MSHTML that proton/wine does not support. So they broke "out of the box" Steam Deck experience... and not like Linux users were alarming about it way before...

So no, as of now it's unlikely anything will change.

Really looking forward to when they add the update. The latest operating system update 12.3 has broken the game for me. Even if they just do a wrapper update to silicon would be a good step forward.

It's been a fair bit of time since the M1 was released - I think they should make up their mind if they still want Mac users purchasing the game or if they want to drop support altogether.

mac gamers rise up

Well, WWDC 2022 just came and we saw Metal 3 and how Capcom will release Resident Evil on Mac.
I hope more and more companies will adopt these. I truly believe where Apple is going with the Apple Silicon is where the future is: efficiency and performance.

Soon, more and more people will have Mac just like they have iPhone/iPad. Hopefully more game companies, especially Square Enix with FF14 or FF16 would come native to Mac.

Please, Yoshi-P!
Better start somewhere. Maybe in FF16?

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Originally Posted by _machina_

I truly believe where Apple is going with the Apple Silicon is where the future is: efficiency and performance.

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Totally agree! Not only do the silicon chips blow PC chips out of the water in efficiency and performance, but also *simplicity*. The WWDC keynote about Metal 3 kept highlighting 'exceptional gaming performance across all silicon platforms'. Apple seems to envision a gaming future where games just *work*, not lists of hardware requirements and constant graphics card updates and I think that sounds pretty darn nice.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

A truly native client to allow the game to run on iOS would be an interesting proposition but I just can't see it happening.

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Since Square Enix charges extra for the Mac license, you should be able to expect such an adaptation.

It should be clear to everyone since M2 at the latest: Apple is not going back.

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

Since Square Enix charges extra for the Mac license, you should be able to expect such an adaptation.

It should be clear to everyone since M2 at the latest: Apple is not going back.

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Honestly, with iPads being as powerful as they are now, it kind of makes me think that SE are missing a trick at this stage. If they can optimise the game enough to run on recent base model iPads and potentially even iPhones, that's a wildly huge market right there for the taking and FFXIV's overall accessibility, ease of play and casual focus is perfect for it.

Even the subscription model doesn't seem to be a problem, OS Runescape appears to manage just fine.

I still don't think it's going to happen, but I'd absolutely love to be proved wrong on this one++

FFXIV is very CPU bound once you turn off features like MXAO. This is particularly noticeable in busy areas and hubs where I believe the character composition thread will quickly max out a core on even the fastest CPUs around today. It’s that reason coupled with inevitable efficiency gains that would make a native version more desirable vs Tomb Raider which does guzzle CPU resources but tends to spread the load far more evenly than a typical MMO.

You could see this in retail vs classic WoW where whilst classic ran decently, Retail was more noticeably consistent with Classic’s performance being hampered in certain situations.

Edit, efficiency would be the bigger deal though. If a native version could be made that was easy going enough to give decent performance on an m1 iPad. That’s a quick route to a huge and somewhat unique market.

Patch 6.4 finally:

https://i.gyazo.com/thumb/1200/8eb2d...4589c7-png.jpg

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Originally Posted by CAMac1988

Patch 6.4 finally:

https://i.gyazo.com/thumb/1200/8eb2d...4589c7-png.jpg

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Can someone confirm that its native and not just "rosetta compatible"?

I took the time to play the game on an M1Pro (10 CPU cores/16 GPU cores).

Basically it runs quite well. But the x64 on Arm emulation is clearly noticeable.

On the one hand, as already expected, in places with many players. Here, a PC also needs a corresponding CPU performance for the game to run smoothly. I noticed this years ago when I did a major graphics card update on my PC and wondered why there was hardly any improvement. Only after upgrading the CPU was there a very noticeable improvement. From many years of experience with many emulators, I also know that native code runs on average 5-10 times faster than emulated code.

In addition, the dynamic compilation is very noticeable. Directly after logging in, the movements are very often stalled at first. Later it becomes less, but it still happens from time to time. Especially after area changes. These hangs are a typical sign that code just needs to be compiled before continuing with the execution. This is the case with all emulations with dynamic compilation.

My conclusion: A native Arm64 client would noticeably improve the gaming experience in the two previously mentioned points.

This topic is worth reviving given how good Apple-silicon laptops and desktops still are in comparison to similarly priced systems. Not to mention that there's been a noticeable increase in other major publishers releasing their titles natively for macOS and Apple-silicon since this thread was last active. Major titles such as Death Stranding Director's Cut, Assassin's Creed Shadows and, Baldur's Gate 3 have all released with native clients in recent months. Likewise many of these are distributed via the Mac App Store alongside platforms such as Steam.

I'm reinstalling FFXIV onto my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) to see if performance has improved since I last played on this laptop back in Endwalker. The launcher is still showing as an Intel application in Activity Monitor so I'm not expecting the experience to be any better than I recall it being. I'd like to see a future where FFXIV runs natively on Apple-silicon much like games such as World of Warcraft and Wuthering Waves (to name a few other major MMO/live service games).

Out of curiosity, what do you have to do extra to be able to play on a Mac? I’ve always used Mac professionally as a graphic designer, but I have a PC for gaming. I have a newish MacBook I bought last year, but I have no clue what kind of gpu it’s running. Can you not just play through Steam the same way as you can on PC?

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Out of curiosity, what do you have to do extra to be able to play on a Mac? I’ve always used Mac professionally as a graphic designer, but I have a PC for gaming. I have a newish MacBook I bought last year, but I have no clue what kind of gpu it’s running. Can you not just play through Steam the same way as you can on PC?

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Officially the Mac version is a separate game license but in reality it's just the Windows client in a compatibility layer provided/licensed from CrossOver (think WINE/Proton but with a commercial license). The problem is that it runs bad and is still an Intel CPU application so you're reliant on the Rosetta 2 compatibility layer (for x86-to-ARM support) still be within macOS.

In reality you get better real world performance, while also saving some money, by running the existing Windows/Steam client (and game license) in a WINE compatibility layer made by the community. There's a tool for this called XIVonMac. However, if Square Enix put the effort into natively porting the client to macOS like an ever increasing number of other games have been, the performance and overall user experience would be night and day better than anything relying on a compatibility layer.

Wuthering Waves, one of the popular gachas, has recently been ported to macOS and distributed via the Mac App Store. Blizzard's World of Warcraft has always had very good macOS support, even in both eras of PPC-to-x86 and x86-to-ARM transitions. Larian have ported Baldur's Gate 3, CDPR are porting Cyberpunk 2077 and, EA have always supported macOS well for The Sims. There's an audience for certain games on macOS and FFXIV isn't an exception but the existing user experience is dire.

Thanks for the explanation. :) I’ve often thought about just running it on my Mac, but I’d heard there were complications. lol

Another bump and another request for an ARM-native version of Final Fantasy XIV on macOS. This year's release, macOS 26, will be the last for Intel-based Macs. More importantly, Apple are also planning to phase out Rosetta 2 in the next few years.

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Apple is also planning changes to Rosetta 2, the Intel-to-Arm app translation technology created to ease the transition between the Intel and Apple Silicon eras. Rosetta will continue to work as a general-purpose app translation tool in both macOS 26 and macOS 27. But after that, Rosetta will be pared back and will only be available to a limited subset of apps—specifically, older games that rely on Intel-specific libraries but are no longer being actively maintained by their developers. Devs who want their apps to continue running on macOS after that will need to transition to either Apple Silicon-native apps or universal apps that run on either architecture.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...for-rosetta-2/

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There's been an increase in Apple-silicon native games in the last few years, including newly released games such as Wuthering Waves and a port of Cyberpunk 2077 due later this year. A new gaming app, a bit like Steam, is also being added to all of Apple's operating systems with the new versions this year (all numbered 26). While I'm not expecting the Mac version of FFXIV to be moved to the Mac App Store/Apple Games, it would at least be nice if it were truly Apple-silicon native.