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Is Square Enix shooting themselves in the foot?
Teala
Member RarePosts: 7,627
Looking at all the low benchmark scores from potential players makes me wonder if Square Enix isn't going to be shooting themselves in the foot regarding FFXIV for the PC. One of the things that made a game like WoW so popular here in the US and abroad was it accessibility due to the low system requirements. Now Square Enix is going to release a much anticipated game with extremely high system requirements. Is this a wise move or are they shooting themselves in the foot?
Comments
I truly believe it will. My system didn't fair well and I'm simply not willing to sink more money into an upgrade. Die hard Final Fantasy fans wont shy away from the game, regardless of the system requirements, but on the fence people such as myself likely will.
SE realizes that they're not going to be getting any new blood that didn't play XI, so i think the specs are moot.
Also, the game and benchmark are not optimized yet.
To your poll; of course.
To your question; No.
Those who can not afford good rigs today will get them in a year, or two and then join in.
And the most important part: PS3. PS3 allows them to release the game with high system requirements for PC. Poor people can play the game on PS3 just fine.
Although I dont think the system reqs are that bad, to be honest.
Windows XP/Vista/7, Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2GHz, 2GB of RAM, 15GB HDD space, NVIDIA GeForce 9600 512MB or ATI Radeon HD 2900 512MB and DirectX 9
That really isn't "too much" IMO.
Those requirements cover most gaming computers made over the last four years.
I think it is better for the game in the long run.
Then again i'm not in the boat of not having a high enough system to run it. I kind of wish the specs would of been even higher to be honest lol, this is still fine though.
Well, when I came to the conclusion that this game doesn't even need CGI animation when in-game rendered CS's are almost as good and people argue on the forums if the benchmark has CGI parts in it or not, I figured these specs are just fine lol.
At least it will be winter when the game launches less heating for my pc.
I got near 3k on low with my custom build that was made last year, all games that are out apart of metro (metro has extreme requirements to max it out lol) I can play them on everything maxed without any problem for now.
AoC in my opinion suffered with something like that because for it's age the requirements were a tad too high.
I hope they optimize the game more I don't want to play a deserted game because they wanted to make it with high system requirements.
This.
It's a shame the PS3 release got pushed back because I imagine it will be a massive boost to sales for the reasons Hyanmen mentions.
Also bear in mind that the current specs are for beta. The client will be optimized a bit better by launch so expect the final specs to be somewhat lower.
No they aren't that bad. But I just came from a website that ran the benchmark on that very set up and it scored below 1290 on the low setting. That means that according to Square Enix's own spec chart for FFXIV game play the gaming rig does not meet the required set up specs to play the game.
No, they're definitely not shooting themselves in the foot because of this. And I really dislike most of the things they've said about the game so far, but eventually somebody needs to be the MMO that starts breaking the mold and requires more processing power. Your 128 MB video card and Pentium 4 shouldn't be able to handle the best games anymore. There needs to come a time when these things become out of date.
I have a 4 year old PC
I scored 2350 on their benchmark
I do not have any unusual or special hardware. No dual graphics card setup or extreme CPUs. (whatever they're called)
I know people want to keep their dinosaur PCs they paid $500 for at Walmart 6-8 years ago, but come on... The video gaming industry will progress with or without you. Thank goodness for that too or we'd all still be playing 2D games with graphics similiar to Diablo 2 and Ultima Online.
Their PC sales wont suffer. Like with any good PC game developer they spend alot of time and money collecting statistical data to determine how high they can place their system specifications without alienating the majority of their expeected target market.
The beta benchmark will be further optimized and may have been already. We will probably get a second benchmark down the road, just like it was with XI.
The benchmark software provided gave us a good scare, I'll admit ( barely pulled 2k on high with a Q9550, 8 gig 1066 ram and a 1 gig 9800gt). Lots of optimizing to be done.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
I agree, but do you recall the economy is not doing all that great right now and many people that wouldn't think twice of spending money to upgrade 2 years ago are not in the same frame of mind they are now. This is why I brought this question up. Is Square Enix gambling with their games success when you consider all the underlying factors that may bite into the sales of their game? It could have a significant impact.
They will suffer, at least initially. If the game is good then people will buy it once they buy new rigs sooner or later and SE will regain some of that lost money though.
It is really time for some gamers to pull their arses out of the Stone Age as it won't be long before their 'WoW capable' PCs won't be able to run anything beyond Farmville. The gaming industry, like technology, has to keep looking and moving forward and can't be continuously worried about catering to people that don't want to move beyond 2004. Just because their shitty machines could run WoW back then doesn't mean developers should be having to keep worrying about including them in future game releases. Eventually Blizzard is going to say 'sucks to be you, but you have to upgrade if you want to keep playing'.
FF fans will still buy and play the game.
AoC had horrendous requirements and still broke 1M box sales. People just went and upgraded their boxes if they felt necessary.
14 intsallments in an IP >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> System requirements for the people who this game is intended for.
"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." - Henry Ford
Nah won't hurt their sales at all but what it will do is keep the WoW communuty away from FFXIV which is a good thing.
If Square Enix gets anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000 they will be flabergasted.
I think it's extremely ironic that the first game that comes out on a console which is said to be the one pulling PC development behind is also the one to push the genre forward at least in the visual department.
Meanwhile PC only MMO's like TOR end up looking like crap because "if you can play farmville, you must be able to play our MMO".
Initially it will affect the pc sales ofc. however, this is for the best as now the games graphics won't age so quickly. In 2 years time most gamers will have the power to play this on the pc. And if not, at least the ps3 version will be out in march. I'll be playing the ps3 version too and at least this gives me a few months to see how the game is going. I'm never buying an mmo at launch again. I've been hurt waaay too many times
Actually the steep system requirements is one of the things that drove players away. AoC may have sold a million copies but they retained like what maybe 100k players at most and that was partly due to computer issues being to steep.
I don't understand how some of you are getting those scores with the rigs you have. I've got...
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU Q9300 @ 2.53GHz
6GB DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M 1GB
...and I got a 300 on that flippin benchmark!
They were also planning to release the game on Xbox360, which I figure partly justified their decision to make the game as good looking as it was.
Although I was never that impressed.
I already preordered, but I am a tad worried I'm going to have to at the very least upgrade a graphics card. The desktop has more than enough other than that department. only a 9100. The laptop while not as good as the desktop, has a 9300m. I'm hoping it runs well either when it is all said and done. Fortunately the wife knows I'm a gamer and won't complain too much about a graphics card upgrade.
Oh yeah I totally agree. SW:ToR's graphics are put to shame by FFXIV's graphics. Love how they look. ^_^