The
FINAL FANTASY XIV website announces that Square Enix has pulled the OS X
edition of
FINAL FANTASY XIV from distribution due to performance issues,
kicking off the post by offering refunds to customers who request them (thanks
Slashdot via
Ant). They explain the various factors that led to this
point, saying they released the incorrect OS X system requirements and
compounded that with the release of an in-development client for the MMORPG, but
apparently solving this is not as simple as releasing the correct client with
the proper specs, hence the refunds. A foul-up of this magnitude involved the
"entire company," though producer/director Naoki Yoshida is accepting all the
responsibility. The post is extremely lengthy, including an entire essay on
their "Mac Version Development Policy," so here's a small portion:
I
believe that the biggest problem with the Mac version release was the
significant discrepancy between the performance of the product our development
team produced and the expectations our customers had for it, which was due to
the lack of information available on our product when sales commenced, as well
as other issues. I would like to explain in detail how this happened.
Up until the official release of the Mac version on June 23rd, we were working
to improve the client’s performance. Consequently, the system requirements which
we should have released were not made available in time, which was a serious
problem.
Although our development and QA teams tested the client on Mac hardware, because
of our last minute efforts to improve performance and the possibility that
system requirements might change, we decided to prepare several versions of
these requirements, with the one to be released depending on the final result.
However, in the chaos leading up to the multi-platform launch of our expansion,
we released incorrect requirements, which were not updated prior to the Mac
version’s official release.
While the development and operations teams, as well as our entire company, were
involved in this mistake, it was I who ultimately made the decision to release
the Mac version under these circumstances and therefore bear sole
responsibility, and I sincerely apologize to you all.
Valve reveals the following were the bestselling games on
Steam for last week:
- ARK: Survival Evolved
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Terraria
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited
- Elite: Dangerous
- Rust
- Fallout 4
- Styx: Master of Shadows
Maybe I just noticed every firework explosion in the past because they all
freaked out Hudson the wonder dog so badly, but it really seems like there were
far fewer of them this year. There was the obvious sound of a big show last
night, but far fewer little flurries of them in the days leading up to
Independence Day, and almost no sounds of amateur fireworks in the local streets
at any point. As I say, maybe I just grew as oversensitive to them as Hudson
was, because in stark contrast the Gunnar-man is cool as a rule, and just slept
through all the festivities.
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