Quote Originally Posted by ZhaneX View Post
But as far as overall restrictions and most intensive considerations on design, Yoshi-P seems quite emphatic that it's 32-bit OS' that are the big hold-back, compared to the memetic "PS3 Limitations". Anyone have further opinions on this? Think we'll see support for such systems dropped in the future outright? Just what enhancements do you suppose could be made if this were the case?
I fail to see how this could possibly be the case. For example, WoW has managed to implement a Transmogrification (Glamour) log, despite being on a 32-bit client. If Blizzard can do it, why can't SE?

More to the point, 32-bit OSes can only hold back client-side changes. If there's really that much gated behind them, just do what many other companies have, and release a f*cking 64-bit client for those who can use it (along with the attendant benefits). It's telling, though, that nobody can really distinguish between 64-bit and 32-bit clients in the majority of cases. Sometimes, 64-bit clients are needed to handle RAM-intensive graphical splendor (like fully-modded Skyrim). Sometimes they're built to better-handle multi-core processors. But that's about it. I certainly haven't seen any other developer blaming 32-bit operating systems so as to mask their clearly-suspect programming abilities.

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To address your question of whether support for 32-bit systems in the future, though, I doubt it. If Microsoft had released Win10 as 64-bit only, it might make sense in a few years, but they didn't. So even people running the latest version of Windows might not have 64-bit capability. That'll make it hard for SE to assess the number of affected customers. Few serious gamers would be affected - the restriction on RAM is a deathblow for more demanding games, so 64-bit versions of Windows are required - but casual ones might be.