It's not fair lol!

[Firewind]

Re: It's not fair lol!

It's more or less the same here in the US.

Well replace Madden with FIFA and yep that is pretty much what it's like in the UK

[Yellow Mage]

Re: It's not fair lol!

Here in the UK you see plenty of ads for other SE games like Lost Odyssey and Infinite Undiscovery on TV.

Only the huge cash cow mainstream franchises like Mario, Sonic, WoW and whatever FPS and/or sports game is coming out on the 360 this week really get prime time ad slots in the UK.

It's more or less the same here in the US.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: It's not fair lol!

So did anyone click around and look at stuff off that site? There is a little video on one link that made me bust out laughing. It shows an elvaan woman and then a taru goes running past with a crawler, couple bees, and mandys on him. LOL @ that advertisement! "Come to our game and get your noob ass owned!"

EDIT: Heres the link

FINAL FANTASY XI

[Firewind]

Re: It's not fair lol!

I've never seen them really advertise hard. I remember seeing the PS2 ads for XI during some primetime spots, but I think word of mouth works best for them. You don't always have to pump oodles of money into ads for people to know about it.

Well with franchises as popular with gamers as Final Fantasy or Mario little more than knowledge of release dates is enough to get the game to sell to the core demographic of the game.

Here in the UK you see plenty of ads for other SE games like Lost Odyssey and Infinite Undiscovery on TV. I've even seen newspaper ads for Star Ocean: Second Evolution and Disgaea 3 (SE published those two games in the UK which explains why we had to wait nearly a year to get them). Final Fantasy ads...I've not seen one on TV in the UK since FFX first came out.

There might have been one for FFXII so I may be wrong though. Only the huge cash cow mainstream franchises like Mario, Sonic, WoW and whatever FPS and/or sports game is coming out on the 360 this week really get prime time ad slots in the UK.

EDIT: Forgot about all of the shovelware being hauled onto the Wii and DS too. Especially during the times kids are getting back from school. Some of the games I've seen advertised make me think: "Why do they think this is going to sell? O.O"

[ospeff]

Re: It's not fair lol!

Wouldn't that contradict everything about the whole players from across the world playing together? As soon as they add something like that, it'll pretty much kill any server that isn't region only.

Not really, if they did something like that none of the current servers would have JP. Americans, Canadians, Europeans, etc. are not raised in a fucked up racist culture, we have no problem playing with each other. Remember "NA ONLY" does not exist. The whole thing is funny anyway because in real life Japan is America's bitch.

[Raydeus]

Re: It's not fair lol!

The windower may improve performance on some cards but that's because the whole thing is a hack from top to bottom, there is no reason to believe that simply upgrading to DX9 would give the same performance as SE has to think about compatibility, not just raw speed. You can force some things when you don't actually have to care about customers.

Minimum requirements for graphics are a GeForce card, that was a DirectX 7 card. The game is only explicit on DirectX level is for audio. The game uses either DirectX's backwards compatibility or uses no DirectX 8 specific calls for it's graphics.

Now that's depressing.

[Feba]

Re: It's not fair lol!

it also goes against their advantage of being able to save hueg by having servers running 24/7, and sustaining 'peak' hours all the time, instead of having lots of time with little going on. Of course, that's probably not nearly as big a deal nowadays, as it's probably lots easier to have nodes switch around as needed, but that would require redoing their server architecture.

But still, FFXI needs fewer servers, not more. If they're going to redo the way they're sorted, they should focus on making it feasible for more people to share a server, instead of trying to break people up.

[Mhurron]

Re: It's not fair lol!

Never!

Edit >

By the way, then what version are they using? I always thought it was DX8.1 o_O

Also, yeah if the windower can improve some performance (or at least that's what I've heard) with the current client then it's even more aggravating having the game run like it does. Hence my lazy-mode comment.

The windower may improve performance on some cards but that's because the whole thing is a hack from top to bottom, there is no reason to believe that simply upgrading to DX9 would give the same performance as SE has to think about compatibility, not just raw speed. You can force some things when you don't actually have to care about customers.

Minimum requirements for graphics are a GeForce card, that was a DirectX 7 card. The game is only explicit on DirectX level is for audio. The game uses either DirectX's backwards compatibility or uses no DirectX 8 specific calls for it's graphics.

[Satimasu]

Re: It's not fair lol!

Wouldn't that contradict everything about the whole players from across the world playing together? As soon as they add something like that, it'll pretty much kill any server that isn't region only. I've never seen them really advertise hard. I remember seeing the PS2 ads for XI during some primetime spots, but I think word of mouth works best for them. You don't always have to pump oodles of money into ads for people to know about it.

[Raydeus]

Re: It's not fair lol!

Maybe they should add or restructure servers so optional regional servers could be made available. I'm pretty sure a lot of people outside of Japan would rather be in an all <insert language/region here> server.

If too many people from other regions is what prevents them from advertising that is.

[Taskmage]

Re: It's not fair lol!

Well, it has been true that with every new wave of players the preexisting playerbase has complained that the community was going downhill, and more regions means more support staff to pay if you want to maintain decent customer service. Still, an MMO is built on players, and once you've already go the infrastructure in place additional subscriptions are free money.

[Raydeus]

Re: It's not fair lol!

The only possible explanation I can think of is that they don't want more NA players or something.

And they definitely don't want players outside Canada-US as shown by their region restrictions on D2D (then again can Canadians download the game from there?) Either way I'm guessing the Steam version (if ever made available there) will have the same restrictions.

[Taskmage]

Re: It's not fair lol!

I don't think I've ever seen an SE or Squaresoft ad that I thought was particularly well crafted, much less "awesome." I do think it's kindof crappy that they seem to spend all of five bucks trying to build an audience for their games here in the states. I remember back in the day the only time I'd ever see an ad for Secret of Mana or Final Fantasy III was at two in the morning on MTV. Now I don't watch TV so I can't say if it's changed. Now granted the series seems to do well enough by word of mouth, but if they bother advertising in Japan, why not here too?

[ospeff]

Re: It's not fair lol!

I knew Malacite was a consumer whore, but I never thought I'd see him make a topic bitching about a lack of advertising.

Attention whore is more like it.

[Raydeus]

Re: It's not fair lol!

Never!

Edit >

By the way, then what version are they using? I always thought it was DX8.1 o_O

Also, yeah if the windower can improve some performance (or at least that's what I've heard) with the current client then it's even more aggravating having the game run like it does. Hence my lazy-mode comment. But getting more info about it is always good.