Square Enix Pulls, Apologizes For Mac Version of Final Fantasy XIV

_xeno_ writes: Just over a week after Warner Bros. pulled the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight due to bugs, Square Enix is now being forced to do the same thing with the Mac OS X version of Final Fantasy XIV (which was released at the same time as Batman: Arkham Knight). The rather long note explaining the decision apologizes for releasing the port before it was ready and blames OS X and OpenGL for the discrepancy between the game's performance on identical Mac hardware running Windows. It's unclear when (or even if) Square Enix will resume selling an OS X version — the note indicates that the development team is hopeful that "[w]ith the adoption of DirectX 11 for Mac, and the replacement of OpenGL with a new graphics API in Apple's next OS, the fundamental gap in current performance issues may soon be eliminated." (I'm not sure what "the adoption of DirectX 11 for Mac" refers to. OS X gaining DirectX 11 support is news to me — and, I suspect, Microsoft.) Given that the game supports the aging PS3 console, you'd think the developers would be able to find a way to get the same graphics as the PS3 version on more powerful Mac OS X hardware.

Comments

Re:Blaming their tools

[tk77]

Whats worse is that it appears they weren't even developing for OpenGL, but rather using Transgaming's (nVidia) cider to translate DX calls to OGL.

"...it works by employing middleware developed by TransGaming (presently NVIDIA) to convert Windows’ DirectX drawing method into OpenGL on Mac systems."

They then go on to compare OGL and DX and claim that if it was developed natively for OGL there would be a 30% performance gap. Excuses for laziness, in my opinion.