Any Update on FFXIV Compatibility for ARM (M1) Macs?

[Greydor]

Jokes aside about FFXIV performance on Macs, we're one generation away from being unable to play this game in Bootcamp, which actually works quite well for this game.

Blizzard announced today that they have native support for the M1 (ARM) SoC in WoW, but FFXIV is still using the (assuming Wine) wrapper, and I'm unsure if this game will even work under Rosetta2 emulation.

Can you please update the product page with compatibility for the new M1 (ARM) SoCs, or, in the event these machines can't run FFXIV at all, issue a warning to consumers that the client is no longer supported for Mac?

[Alex]

If anyone here gets an M1 Mac, I'd love to hear how FFXIV runs. Even if it's just Rosetta2 for now.

I suppose it would be a big deal to port, since a wrapper may no longer be an option. Still, the Mac version is sold separately so it's not ridiculous to ask for continued support.

[Greydor]

The "native" Mac client is terrible today - it's literally unplayable for content outside of crafting, gold saucer, selling things on the MB, etc., due to the dramatic microstuttering. I've just assumed the client had been abandoned outside of a Catalina update to literally just get it to start. I'm blindly assuming the M1 is the official end to the Mac project, where like Logitech, they may simply state that it's only available for play/purchase on Intel machines with Big Sur being the last Intel supported OS.

I think I'll always be sad that a true native client could not be created for this game.

[MPK]

What a waste of dev resources tbh

[Greydor]

What a waste of dev resources tbh

You have to keep perspective This isn't adding a /doze emote or new pvp content. This is a paid license. It needs to be supported or pulled.

[Jin-]

ESO will not be moving to new Macs. Not worth the money. Probably same happens here

[Packetdancer]

The "native" Mac client is terrible today - it's literally unplayable for content outside of crafting, gold saucer, selling things on the MB, etc., due to the dramatic microstuttering.

Out of morbid curiosity, I did fine-tune it to be playable on a MacBook Pro, but it requires a reasonably hefty Thunderbolt 3 eGPU to really benefit. So, it can be playable... but it costs. And while it plays acceptably, I certainly wouldn't swap to Mac as my primary platform for the game.

That said, I strongly suspect WINE—and more specifically Crossover, the WINE variant that FFXIV is wrapped in—is going to be making a serious effort to tune WINE to work properly and efficiently with Rosetta 2 in the short term. And I suspect CodeWeavers will probably try to turn Crossover into an emulator atop the M1 (as opposed to an API translation layer); Crossover is a paid-for product and if they don't have it working on the M1 chips long-term then CodeWeavers has a Problem with a capital p.

Though I don't have a lot of faith that'll work out well for gaming, to be fair. ARM is a lovely modern, efficient architecture that, when you make high-end silicon, can blow x86 out of the water... but it is a different architecture. Layering an API translation layer (like WINE) atop an emulator (like Rosetta 2) is just adding even more overhead to every single thing you do. The same way the DirectX -> DXVK -> Vulkan 1.1 -> MoltenVK -> Metal rendering pipeline for the Mac version of the game imposes a performance hit due to that many layers of translation and abstraction.

However, I also suspect that if they were ever going to do a native port for Mac, the time to do it would actually be right now, when it's already been suggested they're probably doing a PS5-native client (rather than relying on the—admittedly very effective—PS4 backwards compatibility). Because if they're already going to rework the client for PS5 anyway, it's the perfect time to make the client more cross-platform portable in the process.

I don't have faith that they're going to do that, mind you, but if they were, the timing's actually about as advantageous as you could get for something as unfortunate for the Mac subscribers as this.

[Shibi]

Now I research, not sure they can in any speedy manner.

But this post on the Crossover forums https://www.codeweavers.com/support/...;msg=228011#c8 suggests they expect it will work under Rosetta 2

And this blog post https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwh...eresting-times from last week says they think it works from versio 20.0.1 - although that isn't the version of crossover used for Shadowbringers.

[Alex]

fwiw, there are some accounts of people getting the current Mac client to run on M1 Macs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...eb2x&context=3

https://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../blog/4599523/ (use your browser's translate)

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE64Cy3AYTA

[Phileas]

Sorry if this is an old thread but i just finished installling ffxiv on my M1 macbook pro and it runs very smoothly!! Far better than expected with the Rosetta2 x86 emulation. I can play FFxiv on the go tethered to my phone. The worst part was patching on the client is woeful and required a vpn (which i didnt need before on my pc client). Although I only played capped at 30 fps with the macbook only feeling slightly warm after about a couple hours of play. Still for an on board chip thats pretty crazy with my lowww expectations.

Makes me wonder what it would be like optimised for M1...although im fairly sure SE may not bother for a while.