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

[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.

[_machina_]

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.

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

[Roflcopter]

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

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.

[seraf]

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.

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.

[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.

[Shibi]

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

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

[KarstenS]

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.

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.

[Sebazy]

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.

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++