Waiiiit a second!?

[Aykatu]

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)

[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."

[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."

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."

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.

[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

[Darkshade]

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

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.

[Konachibi]

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.

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

[Aykatu]

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

[Akira_Tenshi]

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

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.

[Konachibi]

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.

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

[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.