Time for the Linux port!

[Psychojau]

Making a SteamOS / Debian / Ubuntu version is not a so hard if they have an OpenGL output. They can use Mono for the Launcher and probably the user interface.
About support... It's a joke ! Just look at Steam forums : Community does all the job before companies even know there is a problem

For Yoshida-san :
Please, Yoshida-san, think about it : you could even sell incredibly powerfull customised Final Fantasy steam machines ! Unike old plateforms, it's a freely licensable operating system !

Just look at this (if it's not displayed in japanese, look at the "language" button on top-right :
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

And you must know one thing : Gnu/Linux systems users Don't spend money in OS, but we can spend a lot of money into video games. Look at steam. A few users, but good customers.

[Phe]

still waiting for the mega drive port

[kyuven]

People who keep saying "it isn't hard" are confusing something. Even if it "isn't hard," it's still time consuming. It took them over a year to come up with a mac port. In the time it takes them to come up with a new Linux port, a new build or configuration could come out and they'd have to take MORE time to test for THAT.
And time is literally money since you have to pay your development team. And time spent coming up with a version that works on the Star Trek space anomaly that is Linux could be spend making sure the windows, mac, and PS3/4 versions actually work.
That's not to say I wouldn't WANT it to work...well, in reality I'm completely apathetic since I don't use linux, but let's be real here.

[Evangela]

Evangela, I remember you from my Mac thread. You were a naysayer then, and you're a naysayer now. You have no appreciation for FFXIV being on any platform other than Windows, do you?

I just want the game to be on platforms that actually worth it. Mac, Linux are just an alternate way for PC/Windows, unlike PS Vita or even Xbox One, it will reach a new large playerbase.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

Linux is too volatile a platform to make it worth putting resources towards a linux client.

[CrystalRainbow]

Linux has been on the brink of breaking out into common use for 20 years. 2% of users base doesn't means anything. Get over it.

Also of that 2% of linux boxes out there I would personally guess less then 20% of them even use GUI. So NO NO NO GO away.




You need to make sure it works with all of these. to even get to the 2% users.

[Amarande]

Far as I'm aware, Blizzard's "support" for Linux doesn't really extend any further than some effort to have Warden play nice with Wine so people can play and not get banned (and I'm not sure how much of the work is from each side ...).

I'm actually surprised it is not becoming more popular - with so much of the Western economy as it is, and so many computers not coming with Windows media in case of disaster (pretty much you either have to use the clunky recovery method provided by the manufacturer, which often requires stuff on the hard drive to be intact, which is often not the case during a disaster, or you have to just shell out the 120 USD for a normal copy of Win8.1); not to mention all the older computers still in use that will need upgrades (or should already have had them in the case of that chunk running XP!) for which Linux is likely much more suitable than 8.1 (then again, these computers probably won't run FFXIV well anyway ...).

[Psychojau]

Many people here forget an important rule : When a new market comes (here : SteamOS), the more people comes, the more it grows.
If important games like Final Fantasy games come here, not only they will sell copies because they are first, but this plateform will grow faster from its very beginning. Other companies and customers will come next.
Remember IOS, Android... or even Playstation or Xbox !

(sry maybe my english is not perfect)

[Delsus]

Linux has been on the brink of breaking out into common use for 20 years. 2% of users base doesn't means anything. Get over it.

Also of that 2% of linux boxes out there I would personally guess less then 20% of them even use GUI. So NO NO NO GO away.




You need to make sure it works with all of these. to even get to the 2% users.

You say that "Less than 20% of linux users use a GUI, but I counted over 50% of users in the chart you provided run distros that come packaged with a GUI, load the GUI and start the Xserver on boot, so that's your theory out of the window. Now you might say that the chart is not a representative example due to the small sample size, which I could agree with but then the chart you provided is not relevant to the discussion.

I do agree that they have to look at the problem from a business point of view, but as both Linux and OSX are based on Unix, right at the bare bones of the system they are very similar, porting a Mac version to Linux would be simple, and wouldn't take much work at all. It's not thinking about how many customers they can get, it's is it profitable. If it costs much less to make than the Windows version then it could make sense to make it as it could still pull the same margin, and that's ultimately what business looks at, percentage profits (ie profit margin) than actual money because it shows an accurate example of how you are doing, and it can be compared much easier.

Just because Linux makes up only 2% of the market doesn't mean it should be discounted. Linux is unfortunately in a bad cycle, people that know of it use Windows because Windows has all the programs they use, and Linux might only have 20% of these programs, and the alternatives might not suit their needs, so they stick with Windows. The developers see Linux as an unprofitable market when they look at the market share, so they don't develop for it and for the most part up to now no one seems to have shifted.

[Tiggy]

This is a waste of development time for an extremely niche market with extremely poor hardware support. People who buy linux machines needs to face the reality that they don't have a gaming rig. Not a real one. You made your bed with your choice of OS knowing full well the gaming support it had. It is a waste of time to develop yet another client for a bunch of people just being stubborn about their OS. It's less than 2% of OS's out there. It isn't worth the time. Even if they did make it the graphics driver support is so poor on Linux that it's a minefield to even try getting into for support. It's just not financially worth it.