Dell Partners with Square

zenintrude writes "Gameforms is reporting that Square has signed a deal with Dell that will secure new Dell computers to be shipping with Final Fantasy XI pre-installed. This comes on the heels of another story involving Square partnering with nVidia, in which certain aspects/details in Final Fantasy XI will only be able to be accomplished with a geForce4 card."

Comments

uh oh

[Raven42rac]

Dude, you're gonna lose productivity.

This is sad...

[jpt.d]

I sure don't mind it shipping on new computers from Dell, but requiring a nvidia card for certain things? That is rediculous. I use an ATI Radeon (aging one mind you) and would like to see some real compatibility between them!

Partnering?

[Black Parrot]

All this promiscuous 'partnering' is sure to result in a computer virus that won't wash off so easily.

Connections

[nukey56]

Interestingly enough, a large amount of market share of Square is owned by Sony, which also sells PCs. However, I have yet to see any announcement of Square products being shipped on Sony PCs. It seems strange that the reverse is not the truth.. is there something going on behind the scences here?

Re:Connections

[tb3]

Silly Mods, this isn't insightful, this is wrong.


Sony becoming a sleeper PC giant

If you can't beat em with technology

[SpiffyMarc]

nVidia has finally realized the edge it needs to put ATI under: marketing dollars. No amount of cool tech from ATI will stop the fact that Square signed this deal with nVidia. This is where the GeForce4 will get its' edge against the technically superior Radeon 9700 Pro.

It's the same way with Sony. If you can't win with better games, win with more money and an unstoppable juggernaut of a marketing department.

Re:If you can't beat em with technology

[Archfeld]

I will echo the above AC's comments LOUDLY and logged in. I've got a ti-4600 and a radeon 9700 pro, the Radeon is a better faster board, that has bugs in places I've never even considered. The 4600 is rock solid and compliant. ATI has yet to realize that a video card IS the drivers. ATI support is slow to respond, they often send the wrong info out, heck they did not even have drivers up for the 9700 for nearly 2 weeks after issue. My cd arrived damaged and I had to plead on IRC to get someone to let me ftp the drivers...
I hope ATI gets it together but how long have people been saying that ?

Dude...

[shadowcabbit]

...these jokes are getting old.

But seriously, this could be a good thing and it could also be a bad thing. If FFXI gains enough popularity to generate the fanbase it needs in Japan, a US port (to PC) would be almost guaranteed. But, considering that nobody wants to pay (monthly) for FFXI after buying it, is giving it away free going to make people want to buy it? I think not. Take Everquest, for example-- you can pick up a jewel case copy for $10, a huge slash over what it was back in the day. I did this. And I stopped paying for it two months later, when I found that I don't like that style of game. If anything, it's going to get a huge fanbase for the first month or so and then everyone will quit.

Of course, that's all just my speculation, being a typical FF fan. See sig.

I want a recompiled FF7

[man_ls]

I want to be able to play FF7 on my new PC.

There would be such a massive market if they released a patch, or released a remastered version of the game (updated graphics, perhaps?) that it would easily cover it's own production costs.

Re:I want a recompiled FF7

[Cecil]

I can confirm that it doesn't work on newer cards (GeForce2+ and Radeon 7500+), because it claims to require 8-bit paletted textures. Which apparently newer cards don't support.

It will still run in software mode, but it seems to crash a lot anyway (under Win2000, at least). I still insist that it's one of the best console to PC ports I've seen in a long time, in terms of preserving the 'feel' of the game, and the 'feel' of the console. (Particularily when using a good gamepad, like the Logitech Wingman series)

Unfortunately it really is showing its age. I can't really blame it, considering it is just a port, but I'd love to see a patched version that works on newer systems.

Counter-proposal

[parliboy]

Why don't they port FFIX and FFX first. And I mean really make an effort to port it -- I don't want to have to kick in anti-aliasing x3 to enjoy the game.

What? Don't think it'll sell? So quit trying to port XI.

Re:Counter-proposal

[Junta]

Well, for one, I think 7 and 8 set the precedent that it wasn't that valuable of a franchise for porting to PC as single player games (at least, not after the PS versions are out for months before PC, same problem as Loki).
Now, two factors are diffent. One, this is MMORPG, a genre that has proven itself to have worked best on the PC platform in the past. Sure, there have been console MMORPG's like PSO, but nothing so widely successful as Everquest, for example. Also, as an MMORPG, it is absolutely critical for its sucess to have as rapid growth of users as possible. With standalone games, the overall sales are not affected so much by how many people get it as soon as possible, but the quality of a MMORPG is dependent on a large user base, so if it starts slow, it would hamper later sales badly.

Secondly, this will be a simultaneous release. Unlke the PC ports, people can immediately pick their favorite, most convenient platform without suffering a time penalty, so the sales figures will more accurately and fairly reflect the viability of Square games on the PC versus Playstation. This may be important to show that PC ports are not a waste and bring efforts to port FFXII immediately.

Of course, in my opinion, FFXI has a high probability of failure. Even if executed perfectly on technical terms, the Final Fantasy series fanbase is not necessarily big on MMORPG. I know I like standalone games better, because playing MMORPGs put certain pressures on me that I don't want to deal with. I don't feel like I can play at my own pace, sometimes for the best affect I have to coordinate my playtime with other, and I like a cohesive story that comes to some sort of definitive close. Those differences between traditional FF and MMORPG may cause FFXI to fail, if MMORPG and standalone are sufficiently exclusive communities. I know several people who plan to skip XI because they have no love of MMORPG, and also know several MMORPG players who aren't impressed in the least bit by the name 'Final Fantasy'. Of course, this is only among the people I know, so I have no idea what the true picture is..

Re:Square is loosing...

[stratjakt]

Square's been doing this stuff forever.. Remember Super Mario RPG? Actually, that Disney one looks kind of intriguing.. Probably pick that up for 'the kids'.

I'm just upset they're abandoning the installed FF fanbase in favor of a 'trendy' MMORPG. What made the series great was the story lines, characters, the single player experience.

Now instead of leveling up to track down Sephiroth or defeat the Ultimate Weapon, I get to have Jimmy McNutsack in his parents basement in Iowa call me a 'big gay fag homo'.

I swear to god, those things are just irc chatrooms with 3d avatars, and less intelligent conversation.

Re:No ATI?

[stratjakt]

Does nVidia have its own proprietary 3D api?
Nope, it's pretty much DirectX or OpenGL.

Of course it will. Probably look alot nicer on a 256 meg Radeon 9700 Pro, to boot.

nVidia=3dfx?

[puppetman]

We just saw a story on the collapse of 3dfx. One thing the story didn't mention was Glide, and 3dfx pushing it down the throats of game developers to try to get a monopoly on the market. Thank God for John Carmack, Id Software, and OpenGL.

Now nVidia is doing the following: "This comes on the heels of another story involving Square partnering with nVidia, in which certain aspects/details in Final Fantasy XI will only be able to be accomplished with a geForce4 card"

Now a geForce4 is a nice card, but the ATI 9700 is the only card that fully supports DirectX 9. You would think the 9700 would be better for Final Fantasy.

There is probably a chunk of code that says,

if (card_manufacturer = nVidia)
{
frame_rate=fast;
colors=vibrant;
special_effects=on;
}

It seems like nVidia is going the 3dfx route. Too bad; competition in the graphics card market is good for the consumer.

Re:Why won't they move on?

[ivan256]

Why can't square move on from the Final Fantasy name?

Bushido Blade
Einhander
Ehrgeiz
Vagrant Story
Xenogears
Parasite Eve
Chrono Trigger/Cross
Driving Emotion Type S
The Bouncer
Kingdom Hearts

I think that Square pumps out the quality non Final Fantasy titles, and you're just not paying attention.

Where?

[Jrono]

The deal was with Dell Japan, and I would imagine this is only going to happen with Dell's Japanese computers. Here is a relevant link at Dell's page, and another story in English.

137 comments later noone think this may be a hoax?

[lingqi]

i mean... seriously... are there ANY other sources backing this up?

Square USA has nothing even close to this; Dell is silent as hell. even square japan has nothing at all:

the only press release i can find is here but it just says Nvidia chips are used for testing and with the "best way to play" logo -- so does Unreal Tournament 2003 -- it says nothing about GeForce being the ONLY playing video-card (as all directX compatible (OpenGL?) should work okay. (just like UT2k3 runs just fine on my radeon)

besides this is all for japan anyway. There are rumors (Electronic Gaming Monthly) that says there may not ever be a FFXI release because of the massive amount of support square will have to burden -- and if EA does not want to do it, they may just skip it. (can't find online version of article)

small side note: i remember back in the days when FF7 supported every videocard *except* nvidia TNT... haha... but eventually nvidia gained enough popularity / people bitched about it and they released a patch to allow nvidia. (they even had software rendering back then!) i bet if us radeon users bitch enough they will make a patch for it too.

another small side note: again. back in FF7 pre-nvidia-patch days -- the software rendering was so slow it was possible to predict the slot-machine thingy for one of the mini-games. i actually did much worse in that mini-game after the patch was installed. -- so i finished that part with software rendering, and played the rest with the patch.

"Sir, I'm scared."

[Saxerman]

So, when Microsoft does it it's bad, but when Sony does the same thing it's a good thing? I don't know about the rest of you, but this deal scares me. In terms of revenue Sony is on pretty equal footing with Microsoft and when giant companies like that make deals with their 'partners' to promote their products I can't help but feel that the consumer is the one who suffers.

As a Linux convert I've come to really like having choices. When a piece of software (open or closed) rises to the top on its own merits I don't have much to complain about. The problem is when a product is artificially bootstrapped the alternatives tend to get ignored, even if there are 'better' choices. I really liked my Amiga and Atari Lynx. Unfortunately I was 'forced' to switch to the 'inferior' substitutes of a Windows 3.1 PC and a Gameboy in order to stay mainstream. Certainly poor company management was a factor in both these cases, but I consider them clear examples of quantity beating out quality.

Hopefully I'm just old and bitter. I used to play Everquest, enjoyed it for a time, but in the end it was just sucking up time and providing little enjoyment. I was aware of the amount of willpower I needed to exert in order to give up the game. MMORPGs can be fun, but addictive. Everquest was certainly much harder to give up playing than any MUD I played, and those were free.

FF11 might be a great game. Square has certainly rarely disappointed me. But this is a new and wide open market, and name recognition will sell units even if the game sucks. I just don't want to take another step backward, and I'm pretty sure deals like this aren't designed to improve the market for me.

The REAL Story... No thanks to SlashDot...

[delus10n0]

This is the REAL story (courtesy of RPG Warehouse):

Dell Japan has decided to release two versions of their PCs packaged with Final Fantasy XI. Dell Japan will release the Dimension 8200 and Dimension 4500 with the PC version of Final Fantasy XI. Both PCs will come equipped with an Intel Pentium 4 1.8Ghz processor and a GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB DDR video card. So if you live in Japan and want to get the best performance from Final Fantasy XI this might be a PC you could consider buying.

Here's a link to Dell's website showing off the systems:

http://www.dell.com/html/jp/products/dimen/ff11. ht m

No where do I see that you will be forced to use an nVidia card on the PC version of the game, and no where do I see this deal being in the United States (yet.)

Also, FFXI isn't even out for the PC in the U.S., much less Japan. Squaresoft says November 7th for Japan... with the U.S. version slated for early 2003 release.

Why do I have to do your job for you, SlashDot?

Re:The REAL Story... No thanks to SlashDot...

[delus10n0]

Since SlashDot doesn't automatically generate HREF's from URLs (wtf?), here's a nice link to the Dell website.