I kept seeing people say that Final Fantasy XI still needed PS2 devkits to make new content, despite no longer being playable on PS2 for many years. The FF wiki claims it too, with no source. Well, here it is. It sounds like they scrounged dozens of devkits from around the world. - ThreadSky

spritecell.bsky.social • 13 days ago

I kept seeing people say that Final Fantasy XI still needed PS2 devkits to make new content, despite no longer being playable on PS2 for many years. The FF wiki claims it too, with no source.
Well, here it is. It sounds like they scrounged dozens of devkits from around the world.

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xar.ph•13 days ago

Shades of the reason ff14 servers can't run out of cloud services in order to scale better, because their server infrastructure is still powerpc dating all the way back to when sony and ibm funded it as part of the cell processor push.

xar.ph•13 days ago

Caveats because historians will ask: this was 2020, and the term yoship used in an interview was "different architecture." It may no longer be true in 2025.

perchbird.dev•13 days ago

This is likely not the servers' processor architecture but the architecture of the overall game server deployment

rafaelteixeira.bsky.social•13 days ago

@digdug.bsky.social amigo

digdug.bsky.social•13 days ago

Esse jogo se recusa a morrer

omnirabbit.bsky.social•13 days ago

I don't know how true this is today in 2025 as they've done miracle work on the servers and development speed has picked up. But it's entirely possible that it's just a cadre of programmers that have become godlike at the PS2 dev kits.

heavenstriker.bsky.social•13 days ago

It's mostly their asset creation tools that are ps2 bound, a lot of content in ffxi is created server side and the tools needed to implement it have been able to run digitally. Asset creation is the bottleneck that's stuck on ps2 devkits.

omnirabbit.bsky.social•13 days ago

So that means every time I get one of those new holiday item designs, someone booted up one of the last PS2 Tools left on the planet to do it...

Thank you PS2 Tool...

heavenstriker.bsky.social•13 days ago

I *believe* so, yeah, though I'm not entirely sure what can be done with the virtualized tools vs the devkit. Voracious resurgence's last part was actually delayed because the devkit broke down lol

spaceprez.bsky.social•13 days ago

That's fantastic, they're stuck on PS2 devkits because of tech debt. But that's gamedev for you!

perchbird.dev•13 days ago

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but there's nothing here that says they need PS2 devkits to produce the game for non-PS2 platforms?

spaceprez.bsky.social•13 days ago

It does, its just a little complex and roundabout.

Basically, their workflow involves authoring first on PS2 and then they have processes that build the other platforms off that.

It requires the source build in the format expected.

They could probably adjust it to author on PC, but would take

spaceprez.bsky.social•13 days ago

Enough work that they can't justify the cost.

thetrin.bsky.social•13 days ago

It's wild to me that PS2 is the source platform from which all platforms spring from, rather than PC. I suppose they couldn't have predicted they'd still be running the game more than a decade later (I know it's 2 decades, but the interview is from 2015)

spaceprez.bsky.social•13 days ago

Starting with PC makes more sense except its Square Enix, so you have to imagine that especially back in 2002 they had waaaay more PS2 experience, so start with what you know, get it playable, and then as they green-lit other platforms you build those off that engine.

spaceprez.bsky.social•13 days ago

Er, playstation experience anyways. They probably felt more confident coming from developing PS1 games to do it on PS2. Strong relationship with Sony and all.

perchbird.dev•13 days ago

Usually it is easiest to write your source intending it to be run on the lowest-capability platform you're targeting. Then, you automatically don't have to worry about getting it working on other platforms, since there's nothing more constrained than your initial target

thetrin.bsky.social•13 days ago

that certainly makes sense. I suppose it wouldn't have been possible to set their source platform as a PC with equivalent specs to a PS2? The game did ship on PS2 and PC simultaneously, after all.

zeenatdagrant.etheirys.social•13 days ago

Thank you for having retrieved the source! I very distinctly remembered having heard it from a livestream with Matsui-P, but would have been unable to find it.

spritecell.bsky.social•13 days ago

You can read a translation of the whole 2015 stream here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/46687-Freshly-Picked-Vana-diel-17-Digest?s=6062304c9ec29153976c8388f5776988&p=546656&viewfull=1#post546656

systinya.bsky.social•13 days ago

Ahh, I love a good source. Thanks for digging this up!

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