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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."
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.
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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 =)
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.
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 ?
no offense intended here, but how often do you see releases for the "latest and greatest" games that dont require Windows?
Even Neverwinter Nights which was supposedly gonna include linux "out of the box" wont be doing so with the gold release, and to top that off will require a windows install as a dual boot to even let it work once it does.
even a linux junkie will generally acknowledge that windows has a place for PC Gamers, sure there are some people who deserve big credit for trying to bring gaming to linux, but it's far from a large market
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.
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
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
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