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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."
Look at what you needed to run the PC versions of Final Fantasy VII and VIII - and those were *crappy* ports, but damn, they needed a lot of horsepower, even if they were acting as a PSOne emulator.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
...Square tests teh PLayOnline servers by being posted on SlashDot :o
The PC version will be fully compatible with the PlayStation2 version allowing people on either system to play together.
Wow. This is sure to bring a new level of respect between consoles and PCs. Offically few to none of the computer game makers have accepted consoles like they should, only porting their games to the systems. Now they're taking them and letting consoles and PCs play together. How long before we can Lan PS2s with out machines to play games like Unreal Tournament 2? I know the PS2 has firewire, maybe we can use that for hardware and push manufacturers to bring us cross-compatable games. Together, we can make it happen.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
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.
After playing FF 9 for about eleven hours straight yesterday, I would like to beleive that I could invest some serious time in a Final Fantasy MMRPG.
Still, I don't know how fun it would be if you had to play for even a month to get as far as you can get on the single player games in a week.
I dunno. Being surrounded by cute Square-style anime girls might just make it worth it.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Yeah, but don't forget that FFX for the PS2 requires that you buy added peripherals, including an external hard drive. Altogether, the game will cost up to $150, ignoring monthly costs. The PC gamer can ignore that added cost.
4x4 Evolution was Dreamcast/PC/Mac interoperable like....2 years ago. This is NOT anything new.
TODO: Something witty here...
Does anyone else find the irony in the fact that most stories on here discuss open source product etc but this is a Beta test that you need Windows to participate in ? not to put too fine a point on it but it does make me smile a little...
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
But 4.5 gigs of content? Does that mean that this will be distributed on DVD only?
4.5 gigs translates to roughly 6 and a half CDs, and that's not counting the installer files that likely will only live on the install media. If this holds true, are we looking at a game made up of at least 7 CDs?
Well, its seems I have quite the dilemna. Should I buy FFXI on PS2 or PC? My PC more than meets the requirements listed (64 Geforce2 GTS Pro, 1.2 Ghz t-bird, etc). However, my home entertainment system (surround sound, 36' WEGA TV) makes PS2 games look and sound really good, much better in fact than PC games. I've played EQ on PC before for a bit; was fun, but sitting in an armchair in front of a computer for long periods of time can get pretty stale, especially after doing it all day at work, while with the PS2 version I can sit on my couch, in my living room. Of course, then I would have to somehow fit the keyboard in somewhere so that I can use it comfortably.
Its a hard choice to make, and I'm interested in what opinions people have as to which would be a better buy, the PC or the PS2 version, given these attributes? This isn't something I've ever had to thought about before in terms of an MMORPG, since there havn't really been any cross-platform games until now (or at least none that I've been interested in).
The reason it's so big is because PS2s can read DVD-rom, but square doesn't require that their beta testers can. So they give you a bunch o' cds and load them to your hard drive.
I'm pretty sure in the Final release will allow reading content off dvd.
The thing that makes me sad is that I think they say you have to be in Japan to beta test =(
Things like this make me care enough to make me stop lurking, get an account, and finally post =)
7+ CDs is a lot of swapping.
wtf are you talking about? Remember when Kings Quest I was 14 5.25 inch floppies? I have an old Microsoft Office install for the Mac that was well over 30 3.5 inch floppies.
If final fantasy was indeed the final fantasy, why are there so many sequels?
This is explained nicely here
At the time Square made Final Fantasy #1 , they had just released a couple of unsuccessful semi-RPG-ish games, were nearly out of money, and honestly expected that when the game that became Final Fantasy was complete, they would have to go out of business.
That Final Fantasy #1 became a massive success, and they subsequently had the resources to create more RPGs, was a complete surprise to them, however pleasant..
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.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
wtf are you talking about? Remember when Kings Quest I was 14 5.25 inch floppies?
I'll assume that you're talking about either the updated VGA version of KQ1 or KQ6, which was about 9 3.5' disks. Office's 30 disks is nothing--OS/2 was _sixtysomething_.
But I digress.
Anyone who remembers the early days of CD-ROM games can't really complain about 4 or 5 disc swapping. Remember Sierra's Phantasmagoria? Seven bloody CDs (for a game that was short as hell)! Its sequel wasn't much better--it took up a "mere" six. Wing Commander 4 was also six, as was Gabriel Knight 2.
Yeah, so anyway, my point is that all those games required in-game swapping, whereas this 4.5gb swap bitchfest is merely dealing with installation. My advice to those who deem it necessary to whine:
Suck it up, buttercup-- God didn't give you 80gig drives to sit half-filled with two-year-old MP3s and cheap pr0n couresy of Gnutella.
-Frobozz
Brought to you by the friendly folks at FrobozzCo....
Different things suit different people. I'm not going to list all of the reasons, but a PC suits me much better than a game console. But one thing that you missed and that does favor your belief is that the PS2 came down in price about a month ago, it's now $199 US (as is the X-box. And the PS-one is $49, with the cube at $149)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
no kidding its the game that plays itself...Every now and then you get to push some buttons, then back to "story"
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Yeah that's really rough, especially since the kana you marked as (the play online) actually says "Final Fantasy XI." It's a list of items, not an apositive. Tetra-master is the (collectable) card game from FF9, which you'll be able to play on PlayOnline.
The only connection all of the Final Fantasy games have is that they are similar sorts of games, with the same sort of interface, and possibly some names of things and people ported over.
Nothing else is the same, thus every game is Final.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Graphics power wise, a current console will blow away a few year old PC easily. Plus, remember, everyone with a particular console has an identical system, so it's possible to get 100% of the performance out of the hardware without having to worry about how many people can use it. Also, consoles have damn nice memory bandwidth, which helps a lot for the graphics work. In short, if you design a machine to do one thing, and do it really well, it'll easily out perform a general purpose machine.
And of course, Windows puts in a nice chunk of overhead.
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.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Win98: $150
Celeron 1GHz: $110
128MB RAM: $35
Geforce2MX:$70
Maxtor 20GB: $100
FFXI: $70 (probably)
Total: $535 CDN (about $300US)
It's hard to find P3s and Geforces anymore. And most of the stuff people will probably already have from before. And it assumes you already have a mobo, monitor, etc, etc.
Well, what's the point of the above calculation. Procrastination mostly, I have a final exam tomorrow. Secondly, I have everything except for the video card. Being a poor ass student, I want to know what it will actually cost me to play FFXI.
So I'm thinking, do I want to upgrade now or upgrade when Doom3 comes out (which won't be out for another year at least). In a perfect world, I would upgrade now and in a year (Not to mention a few times in between).
Goes to show that the major reason to upgrade is usually when that new game comes out. And for some people, when the next version of Windoze is released. Personally, I'm still dual booting with Win98 and only boot out of Linux to play games. So logically the next question is: Any word on native Linux support or (blech) Winex support?
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).
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
They can make a game that takes up 4.5 Gigs of precious magnetic storage, but they can't make an English version of the website. Or should I say Engrish.
Yup, and you could also load all the data onto hard drive if you had one big enough. I did this with BG2 when it came out, as I've now got a 40GB drive (10GB NTFS for XP, 10GB FAT shared and 20GB linux) and space wasn't a problem.
> well, this end the arguement on whether PCs or consoles are more practical for gaming.
> A $299 Playstation 2 sounds quite better if you're just in it for gaming.
Add to that the cost of a PSX (not all PS games play perfectly on PS2), a Gamecube and N64, an Xbox, thousands of arcade machines, etc. because the PC is a unified gaming platform and the rest aren't. I can play almost any PC game from 1996 on my PC today, yet the same isn't true about playing every Nintendo game from 1996 (N64 era) on a Gamecube today--can't be done.
In addition, the generalized hardware of the PC allows for all consoles to eventually be emulated as PC processing power increases; every console prior to the N64 and PSX is emulated with near-100% accuracy, so that all of those consoles' games can be played on a PC with ease. Not to mention the over 1600 arcade games emulated at the moment by MAME, upping the ante significantly. Oh, and add to that all of the classic 68k Mac games, which can be played on a PC perfectly using Basilisk ][.
In other words, maintaining a PC gaming platform allows access to literally tens of thousands more games than a PS2 or a Gamcube will ever be able to play. It also offers near-complete backwards compatability, great future compatability due to easy and inexpensive (if nothing radical is done except every couple years) upgrade paths, and compatability with most of the console systems through their eventual emulation.
In addition, the hardware specs you listed for FFXI on the PC aren't very grat--I have a system superior to the requirements in every way, and I built it a year and a half ago.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
FF7, FF8, FF9, etc were all games originally for the PS2, later ported to the PC. The original ports to the PC ran fine on a modest setup; in my case I had a Pentium 200 and a 3Dfx Voodoo2 card at the time, and FF7 ran beautifully.
So, my point is, why do the PC specs inflate so much, whereas the games run on the same original hardware for years (a PS2 from 3 years ago is still basically the same PS2 today, right ?)
But I digress. My point was, "Playing games is expensive". And as a result, as a poster mentioned, there is the dilema of: a)get FFXI for PC or b)get PS2 AND FFXI for PS2. With the recent price drops of consoles, the PS2 & FFXI combo is looking attractive.
Sorry, I meant FFXI, that being the topic of the conversation. One little typo really changes everything, doesn't it?
"I still want FF IX and FF X on the PC."
Unfortunately they made such a mess of the conversion of 7, and particularly 8 that PC sales were poor, therefore they stopped bothering.
Go buy a PS2 and play the games the way they were meant to be played! (I think FF9 works on the PS2).
graspee
In the UK the PS2 came with a BASIC interpreter on the demo disk and you could just plug any usb kb into it- I used the one of my iMac. I thought it was really cool of Sony to include this, as it kind of brought back warm memories of getting a new 8 bit micro and checking out its BASIC for the first time. ;)
graspee
The card game in FF9 sucked donkey's balls compared to the one in FF8. The card game in FF8 was the best sub-game ever! IMO it was the extra complication they added to the rules for the FF9 card game that made it not as fun- it just became too difficult to grok the problem space, whereas in the FF8 one you could just about do it...
graspee
The reason is simple enough: the majority of people who buy games don't have newer PCs.
Think for a moment about the other requirements for the FF game. Now re-consider your statement. If you're getting a game that needs a 800MHz+ computer and a GeForce+ video card, then pretty much any machine that fits that description will have a DVD drive as well.
± 29 dB
FF7, FF8, and FF9 were released for the PS1, FFX and FF Online were designed for the PS2... Hence why they were released so quickly for the PC (less optimizing for the emotion engine of the PS2, the systems were largely set up for PC emulation, hence why they seemed to run slower than the original PS1 games would run on Bleem! and other PS1 emulators)...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Oh yeah... and that's also the reason it's going to take up 4.5GB.
People have been predicting the demise of the PC as a gaming platform since goodness knows when but it is still with us.
There could be many reasons for this. Perhaps it is because within a year high end PCs are always able to outperform the most recent consoles. Perhaps it's because certain styles of game (e.g. Civilisation or the best selling (PC) game of all time the Sims) just works better with a default PC setup. Perhaps it's because PCs have a bigger installation base.
Don't get me wrong, for the most part I prefer console games (actually the only console I own is a GBA and very good it is too) but it's too easy to fall into the trap and write off PC games. Most of the popular online games are still PC based and the fact that Square has chosen to release FFIX for the PC (rather than the Xbox) shows that it still considers to be a viable platform. Also note that the requirements state that it needs Windows (not Linux). Just because Linux runs on the PS2 doesn't make it any more viable as a gaming platform.
The fans of the Final Fantasy franchise for the most part will probably not be that interested in XI. People get Final Fantasy games because they want to play through a story at their own pace and reach a conclusive finish. A story that is complete in and of itself, not an ongoing MMORPG. That is a different type of game altogether. With a MMORPG, in order to have any cohesiveness among characters, your schedule is tied in with other people's. The story does not reach an end, but just continues on and on and on, *if* there is any sort of story at all.
:)
I know a lot of Final Fantasy fans who plan to skip any online-only installments. I heard that in Japan sales were below expectations. I'm sorry, but Final Fantasy appeals more to fans of standalone game, and a different set of people go for things like Everquest and those people don't get excited over the name "Final Fantasy". First the movie, now this, it's cool to see Square experiment, but perhaps they should get XII out faster
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Not to mention that writing for the PS2 is somewhat low-level, so you're likely to be making much more optimized and highly targeted code for it; on a PC you've got DirectX/OpenGL to sit behind, much higher resolutions to deal with, and a much greater diversity of hardware to support.
Plus, a beta is going to be full of debug code, and isn't going to be well optimized.
Your sig says it all:
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit; there's no point in making a damn fool of yourself"
Yup... you just made a damn fool of yourself. Final Fantasy 10 (which I own and completed a few months ago) does NOT require the hard drive kit or any added peripherals (except maybe having a rumble controller and PS2 Save card), and definitely does not require any monthly costs. The game cost me about $55 when it was released, not $150.
And besides, the hard drives that they will be selling will go inside the PS2, not external. If you look at the back, there's a removable panel which reveals an empty bay just the right size for a hard drive.
I don't have $40 to spend on a drive that I will use only for gaming. That's why I don't see the need to have one.
FF9 does indeed work on PS2, that's where I'm playing it now. Same with Chrono Cross. I played 7 and 8 PC-only. I gotta say, though, the low resolution of the 3d sprites of FF9 on PS is really horrible, relative to 8 on the PC. Thought the animation and background look better than 8, because everything is at such low resolution, you can hardly tell who anyone is. I would certainly have bought a PC version of 9, assuming it didn't have the incompatibility problems of 8.
And 10 on the PC would totally kick ass. The whole problem of the PS1 conversions was the abundance of lowres prerendered graphics. But 10 didn't haveanything prerendered outside of movies--it would have looked so awesome at 1024x768, and more importantly ANTI-ALIASED. Oh my God, poor FFX needs to be anti-aliased so horribly bad.
But both despite being on the wrong platform, both games are way better than the horrible FF8...
was actually supposed to be a X-Box launch title. But Bethsoft of course caused the ship date to slip.
Regardless of where the game started, it almost always sells better on the console, unless the console is missing a feature that the game needs. Hell I had simcity for the SNES.
Have to agree here -- the one from FF9 made very little sense. The extra rules took a game that was mildly amusing (the card game from FF8) and made it confusing as all hell. I can't count the number of times I said "Huh? How the hell can he take *that* card with *that* one?". The one from FF8 made sense, and was rather consistant once you figured out how it worked.
Of course, I think a rulebook would have made both games more enjoyable - especially the one from FF9.
I am trying to find a reference, but I seem to remember that when I bought baldur's gate, it had a little slip of paper in it that said, in essence,
If you want a DVD for this game, send $10 and all 5 CD's to our address, and we'll send you the DVD.
This sticks out in my mind because i seem to remember the slip of paper saying that they would accept the CD's scratched, in pieces, as long as they were all there.
~Will
sig?
How do you optimize 4 gig of already compressed video/audio/texture files? Make everything out of one texture, one sound?
Games are getting to be more realistic and more immursive through increased use of the available hardware. Larger worlds, more complex models, larger more detailed textures and sounds.
Though I too have nostalgia for some of the old DOS games, having been a hard core gamer since long before even then. I can honestly say that not one of them can stand up to the audio/visual excitement or gameplay of todays high requirement games.
If money is an opbject, todays consoles are still pretty cheap and have equally good graphics (though lower res) and gameplay as the best PCs... So spend 2 grand on a new computer or 200 on a new console. Either way, gaming has never been more exciting than now.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I don't think so. "Gaming" machines haven't needed DVD-ROMs in the past. My Windows machine is used for pretty much just for games and video capture, and I hadn't needed to get a dvd drive, though it would come in handy.
how often do you see releases for the "latest and greatest" games that dont require Windows?
Board games don't need Microsoft Windows. Card games don't need Microsoft Windows. Athletic games (basketball, dodgeball, etc.) don't need Microsoft Windows.
Restricting "games" to mean "video games" produces the following: None of the games released for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, or Palm OS uses a Microsoft operating system. (Xbox OS is a slimmed-down Win2k, and some Dreamcast games run Windows CE.)
Restricting "games" to mean "video games designed for computing devices not sold explicitly for playing games" seems to exclude most current x86 PCs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hmmm irony seems lost on some people... Ok let me put this clearly. On a normal subject a post about a WINDOWS only software product on here is flamed into non existance as monopolist etc... yet a post about a GAME is fine - my point was the hyporcrisy of some people is intriguing. I thought that it was not an especially off topic post in light of the fact that linux and open source gaming companies lilke Loki have all failed to survive a market where people are of course reluctant to pay for anything they should have access to for free.
Of course instead im attacked as some sort of troll - which is understandable as people intenstly dislike others saying things they don't agree with......
I am left to wonder if you would be so brave if you were not able to hide behind the term Anonymous Coward.. (Never has the word 'coward' been so truthfully applied) If you cannot debate my point with an actual account (thus risking karma like real people) then your opinion (whatever it is) is invalid.
This site used to be a tech site - now its an abuse site and pointing out that one of the moderators rated me flamebait in light of their incredible consistency in rating anything they personally dislike or non fawning down im not surprised - indeed i would have been surprised if it was NOT rated that way..
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
'Even quake 2 was a flop in sales respects '
that of course SHOULD read Quake 3 as we all know Quake 2 was a huge success.
Sorry for any confusion
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Not everyone is john carmak okay? Even though the only really important card vendors out there are ATI and Nvidia, for a _beta_ test they usually try to focus on one popular graphic card. I'm suprized that it doesn't have to be a Specific Nvidia card like the 4600Ti based cards. The unified driver must make it easier to not mandate that all beta testers use the exact same card. That or the in-house development was far enough along that they wanted a mix of Nvidia cards. Perhaps they worked on the nvidia support harder, and it's better than the ati support right now. Perhaps they have slightly optimized the engine for Nvidia, and it runs really slow on ATI cards until they can improve the driver. Or maybe they figure that they can do all the ATI support testing in-house, but need beta-testers to get all these third party Nvidia cards to all work properly. When a game ships retail without ATI support then you can be afraid.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
And this isn't 1994 anymore either. The difference in mastering cost DVD vs CD has dropped to the point where you're talking fractions of a cent per copy. As for the pressed disk cost, while Joe consumer may pay $0.25 and $1.25 respectively, CD-r cost 0.02 cents to produce, and Pressed CD cost about the same, and while i don't have the actual cost on a Pressed DVD I'd have to imagine that it's already dropped to near CD pressing prices. We're talking technology that is ten years old already, I'm sure that to sony who has a line to press DVDs it's likely cheaper to press one DVD than 7 CD rom.
I'm sure though that the people who own the production lines for DVDs are charging as much of a premium as they can get away with though. Just like DVD-r media retailers are charging almost $3 for 2x certified DVD-r media. There is no way that that 2x media cost double the cost of a 1x media, yet they can get away with charging double, as long as people are willing to pay it.
As for the argument about people not having DVD-roms goes, well, it's a chicken-egg scenario. You can't have chickens without the eggs, but who's going to lay that egg to make the chicken? If noone makes games on DVD no serious gamer is going to buy a DVD-rom drive. Why not do something low-risk then, bundle a lot of old games on one DVD and sell it cheap? given that DVD-roms are available cheaply you can make sure there is an installed base of DVD-roms, without having to worry about a new game having it's sales weakened.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html