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

[_machina_]

Hello there,
I am a Mac user and have been playing FFXIV on the Mac.
As per Letter from Producer Live Part LXVIII: the goal in the next 10 years is to evolve FFXIV to: "an RPG that's fun alone or with friends.”
With yesterday announcement from Apple on March 9 regarding the final chip of M1, now they have M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra. With M1 Pro-Ultra very capable in running FFXIV.

My question is:
1. Will there be a Native ARM based FFXIV in the future/10 years for macOS like WoW has had on the very first day of M1?

I know that this is not a small project at all and not looking for a quick fix (hence the 10 year preamble), however, if/when FFXIV ever be ported natively to Mac, it'd also open up doors to the mobile platforms of the iOS and iPadOS and perhaps tvOS. (and even other ARM based OS: Android / Windows ARM).
One of the benefit I think is that, never before FFXIV would be playable on the mobile device/laptop with high efficient on power consumption. The mobile gaming industry is huge and wondering if SE/FFXIV would ever dip into that?

Would the development team think this would be done in the next 10 years as part of the "an RPG that's fun alone or with friends.” journey?


ps: I've been using the launcher from Square Enix just before Endwalker launch and then switched to XIV on Mac (xivmac.com) for better translation performance.
pps: Yoshi-P, if you ever read this, please check out the team at xivmac.com. They have been truly awesome in supporting FFXIV on Mac.
ppps: Windows users, please be kind and supportive on this. It's hard enough to game on Mac, we don't need anymore bashing. We know. But our hardware now is more and more capable especially building Apple's own Silicon. So please, be kind, supportive and stay on subject.

[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++

[zoeyrae89]

This is just a heads up that the launcher is DEAD for ALL MacOS users next week due to macOS update 12.3. There may not be many of us on macOS but an updated launcher will be necessary if you don't want to alienate an entire platform.