Final Fantasy XI PC Requirements Announced

PKFC writes "Square has begun taking applications for the Final Fantasy XI PC Beta test which starts on June 18 in Japan. The minimum specs are: Win 98, PIII 800 MHz, 128 MB RAM, a GeForce card and 4.5 GB of hard drive space, while the recommended specs include a 64 MB video card and a Pentium 4. The 4.5 GB is used for game data, the PlayOnline software and the ever popular, Tetramaster. The PC version will be fully compatible with the PlayStation2 version allowing people on either system to play together. Be warned that the links go to Japanese web sites."

Comments

Communication in console MMORPG's?

[dmwst30]

Games like Everquest have been around for several years, and boast the advantage of a keyboard to make in-game conversations simple and efficient (if not gramatically correct). However, the PS2 doesn't come with a keyboard. It IS compatible with a USB-keyboard, from what I have read. Anyone planning on NOT using a keyboard if they play this game? Without the ease of communication it would allow, sounds like the game would be alot harder.

Re:Available media

[dlur]

Sure floppy swapping was prevelant in the time of floppies, but today with the types of media available there should be little or no reason to ever have to swap CDs or DVDs.

For example, Baldur's Gate came out on I think 6 or 7 CDs (been a while and too lazy to dig my old games out). In that game you had to switch CDs rather often. After I'd finished the game I find, to my dismay, that the game was released later on on DVD. The time I would have saved, not to mention the enormous annoyance factor that could have been prevented if it were available on DVD from the get-go would have been astounding.

Basically I've noticed that most games are released on CD...multiple CDs in most cases. Why do game publishers still do this when the majority of newer PCs come standard with DVD-ROM drives (and if they don't they're less than $50 in most cases). When a game contains 4.5GB of game data wouldn't it just be easier to put it all on one DVD? Besides recordable DVD drives are still semi-expensive so not everyone has one yet. What better way to slow down game piracy than put it out on a media that not everyone can copy....yet.

Funny Stuff

[SomeOtherGuy]

Hmmm..Sounds like they should be getting kickbacks from Maxtor, Nvidia, and Micron for making sure you have to have a screaming PC to play the same game that can be played on a PS2. (I know that the PS2 is pretty fast as far as consoles go...But having to have a 64 meg Vid card, 4.5 Gigs of HD space, 128 Megs of memory, and a fast CPU -- makes me wonder why they can't optimize a bit on the PC side).

BTW -- I am having oodles of fun playing Warcraft II and Red Alert on my Pentium 200MMX laptop with 1.5 megs of Video Ram and 64 Megs of memory -- Sad that game companies nowdays think that resource rape will make up for clever design and gameplay. I will clap loudly for any company that can publish a 2002 game that does not require the latest 3D card and oodles of CPU and memory to be fun.

pass...

[Anonymous Coward]

call me old fashion by IMHO I prefer MUD to get my 'MMORPG' needs. You might want to try WOT-Mud, its a nice MUD based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Its free and does'nt require 4.5GB of HD space :)

Also, maybe Square is changing their theme, but FF is an epic saga which has a beginning and an end with a fantastic storyline, I feel that FFXI does'nt have that so I'll wait for FFXII for the PS2 (or Gamecube).

Re:4.5GB on disk???

[Paladin128]

With the ps2 running at only around 300mhz, while I'd expected higher PC requirements I didn't expect that much extra.

Well, on the PS2, there is no large OS (like Windows) to deal with. Everything is designed specifically to do 3D accelleration and media streamin. The PS2's "emotion engine" is actually a 3 processor system: the CPU, VU0, and VU1. VU0 and VU1 (the "vector units") are specialized processors that are designed to do really fast matrix math. VU0 is connected on the same bus as the CPU, while VU1 is semi-coupled with the "Graphics Synthisizer" (GPU). VU0 is often used to do skinning, physics, and audio processing, while VU1 is often used to implement various procedural shaders and other programs similar to DX8 vertex and pixel shaders.

A PC, however, has only one CPU, a bunch of different busses, and games are traditionally run at higher resolutions. On a TV, every game is run at either 30FPS or 60FPS on an interlaced screen. Having a sharper, high-res, progressive display, a much higher fillrate is required for good viewing. So you need a higher pixel clock, higher filrate, more memory, more memory bandwidth, lower latencies, and more raw power. Throw a large OS on top of that (Windows 2000 or XP) and you're a tad short on CPU power, memory bandwidth, etc. compared to a simple, streamlined gaming machine.

PC Games are irrelevant

[foonf]

This story, for some reason, seems to epitomize perfectly what I have been feeling about PC video games for the past couple of years:

First, its a port of a console game. Any successful PC game these days, except for a few extremely successful franchises, either is ported from a console, or is ported to a console immediately. Except for those few extremely successful games, the financial requirements almost require that it be available on as many platforms as possible. The kind of diversity and originality that used to characterize computer games, since their origin in text-based strategy and adventure games in fact, can no longer be supported by the adolescent and console-driven market of today.

Second, the hardware requirements are completely out of touch with most computers actually in use. A lot of people who don't play video games probably have computers less than half as fast as the recommended system, and are quite content with them. Aside from people with new machines, and people building systems specifically for playing video games, it is out of reach of a surprisingly large number of computer users.

And the people who have the hardware to run this...a strong majority of them are probably sufficiently involved with video games that they own a Playstation 2 anyway. Considering this I wouldn't be surprised if video games on the PC disappear altogether shortly, especially as special-purpose toy systems like video game consoles increase in power. This could be a potentially postitive development in two ways, not only removing a major impediment to the proliferation of Free operating systems on desktop PCs, but also removing a large subset of users from the Wintel orbit entirely (after all, whats the only PC operating system you can run on a Playstation 2...yeah, thats right, [GNU/]Linux).

Hey AC

[jawtheshark]

(In reply for the AC) While what you say might *sound* interesting, I fear you have it the wrong way around. Most games on PC require some knowledge of the system to get it running. Good drivers installed, knowing which OpenGL/DirectX mode to select. Keeping up with drivers. This however is a complex thing for Joe Blow with his P-IV. Remember he wants to pop in the CD/DVD and play his game. He might get to run it on his brand new PC today, but the next game around (in one year) won't even run on his badly maintained Windows XP machine (ever seen a badly maintained Windows machine? You'll recognise one when you see one!) Put "price of a console" vs. "price of a new computer" into the equation and the console becomes a clear winner.

You might think I'm talking junk...I'm not. Remember Unreal? I run it on a Pentium Pro with a Voodoo2 card perfectly, however to be able to run it on my Pentium III with NVidia Geforce2 MX I had to download a patch of about 20Meg. Hardly Joe Blow's stuff to do, and these are just old games.

For the normal consumer it's convenience that counts and that is what you get with a console... that along with a much longer lifetime of the product. How long was the PS1 around? 5 years (lost count)? The PS2 will be around for quite a while... before it becomes obsolete. However the above mentioned P-III PC just has become obsoleted by Final Fantasy XI...I just barely own it 1.5 years. (And I'm *not* going to replace it...thank you)

More and more geeks and nerds revert to console gaming and I have thought myself of buying a console (haven't done that yet). Don't think I'm a console fanatic: I've been into PC games since there were text-adventures and CGA games. (Anyone remember Alley-Cat? Sweet game!) No, I don't play much nowadays...getting older you know.