Sony Z4 tablet not compatible with FMT19

[Gerara]

really sports Interactive?

[Lucas]

The list is a compatibility list of supported hardware. 

There are hundreds of Android tablets out there.

In the case of some devices there are technical reasons why they are not supported.

I'd advise you wait and see on release whether the game is available for your device or not.

[Gerara]

Thanks for the reply. The only reason I bought this tablet was to play FMT. If you check its specs, you can notice that it is better than tablets in the compatibility list.

[rich10]

@Lucas does this mean @Gerara isn't able to download the game to test if it works? As in: it's blocked by the Play store?

[Lucas]

24 minutes ago, rich10 said:

@Lucas does this mean @Gerara isn't able to download the game to test if it works? As in: it's blocked by the Play store?

I said whether - so that means he may be able to, or may not be able to. He should wait and see.

[Gerara]

Just to inform you, I have contacted Sony UK about the issue. Someone could explain why tablets with lower or equivalent specs are in the compatibility list.

[rich10]

9 hours ago, Lucas said:

I said whether - so that means he may be able to, or may not be able to. He should wait and see.

  I wasn't holding you to account for this, I was genuinely wondering if SI have an allowed list - and everything else is blocked; where I work we don't, but we handle features that don't work as expected with a message to the player.

[Lucas]

1 hour ago, Gerara said:

Just to inform you, I have contacted Sony UK about the issue. Someone could explain why tablets with lower or equivalent specs are in the compatibility list.

See above: 

On 24/10/2018 at 15:45, Lucas said:

The list is a compatibility list of supported hardware. 

There are hundreds of Android tablets out there.

Why would Sony know? They won't have tested the game.

Sony won't be able to tell you, and it's not feasible to list all tablets. The List includes a range of hardware the game's been checked on. 

27 minutes ago, rich10 said:

I was genuinely wondering if SI have an allowed list - and everything else is blocked;

So the list contains hardware that it's been tested on.

Some tablets won't be allowed because they don't support something on the spec sheet. 

So there will be tablets that you can play the game on that aren't on the list, but SI couldn't tell you what they are.

[Gerara]

That explains everything. SI did not test Sony Z4 tablet. I expect the 2nd November. Thank you Lucas

PS: Sony may care why its brand name is not in the compatibility list. They still sell tablets as far as I know.

 

[kitcub]

On 26/10/2018 at 09:10, Gerara said:

That explains everything. SI did not test Sony Z4 tablet. I expect the 2nd November. Thank you Lucas

PS: Sony may care why its brand name is not in the compatibility list. They still sell tablets as far as I know.

 

Think Sony have bigger concerns, tbh.

[Gerara]

I think that too but the thing is that sony xperia z4 tablet it is not one of the hundreds tablets out there in the market. It was probably one the best, if not the best android tablets sold  in 2015 and still its specs are better than other devices included in the list. At least, odd decision by Sports Interactive not to test it at all, and although it was in previous years compatibility lists. I will buy a compatible tablet this year and next one a new one again in order to play FMT20. Oh no I forgot, I may be able to pay for the game,  , and if I have any issues with it ,Sports Interactive will not provide support at all. Dear customer, buy the game at your own risk . Fair enough

[Tomhet]

7 ore fa, Gerara ha scritto:

I think that too but the thing is that sony xperia z4 tablet it is not one of the hundreds tablets out there in the market. It was probably one the best, if not the best android tablets sold  in 2015 and still its specs are better than other devices included in the list. At least, odd decision by Sports Interactive not to test it at all, and although it was in previous years compatibility lists. I will buy a compatible tablet this year and next one a new one again in order to play FMT20. Oh no I forgot, I may be able to pay for the game,  , and if I have any issues with it ,Sports Interactive will not provide support at all. Dear customer, buy the game at your own risk . Fair enough

I agree with you, I don't think is fair to make only a compatible list, they should make the effort to give only minimum requirements related to the Android version and so on. The market is big, there are a lot of tablets and people like me are taking in consideration to buy one able to play fmt. I would like to buy a mediapad m5 lite and in the list only the mediapad no lite version is reported. The lite one costs almost 100 euros less! I refuse to choose a tablet from a list published by FM, so unfair. 

[Keyzer Soze]

But the specs for the lite version of the mediapad are not the same when compare with the mediapad. 

Só, it's normal that one can run the game and the other can't. 

[Lucas]

21 hours ago, Tomhet said:

I agree with you, I don't think is fair to make only a compatible list, they should make the effort to give only minimum requirements related to the Android version and so on.

Doesn't really work like that. Certain textures the game uses for example, may mean that certain tablets can't support it. I remember that being the case for an old version of FMT (one of the first ones, iirc), but I've no idea about 18/19.

So there are reasons why they can't provide a minimum spec list, and why they provide a compatibility list. 

It isn't just as simple as "new graphics card and processor with silly name and larger number is better" on a piece of paper. And that isn't SI's fault. I've known manufacturers before now use the larger number trick for newer devices that are in fact, worse than older ones.

 

[Gerara]

So there are something like hidden minimum specs and the game will be only available to devices that meet them on 2nd of November? Play store will check it?How does it work?

I cannot understand why last year SI tested Sony tablets and this year decided not to do so. I suppose that it is probably because the cost of supporting owners of sony tablets is greater than the profit made by owners of sony tablets, since they are fewer than owners of Huawei and samsung tablets. Everything about profit. I can understand that SI is a company that aims to maximise profit. What I dont understand is the lack of appreciation to fans of FMT , its customers,that bought one of the best tablets in previous editions compatibily lists in order to play the game.However, Its not only making profit . SI made at least a loyal customer unhappy . Making customers unhappy may lead to less profit in the long-term.

[Lucas]

24 minutes ago, Gerara said:

So there are something like hidden minimum specs and the game will be only available to devices that meet them on 2nd of November? Play store will check it?How does it work?

I cannot understand why last year SI tested Sony tablets and this year decided not to do so. I suppose that it is probably because the cost of supporting owners of sony tablets is greater than the profit made by owners of sony tablets, since they are fewer than owners of Huawei and samsung tablets. Everything about profit. I can understand that SI is a company that aims to maximise profit. What I dont understand is the lack of appreciation to fans of FMT , its customers,that bought one of the best tablets in previous editions compatibily lists in order to play the game.However, Its not only making profit . SI made at least a loyal customer unhappy . Making customers unhappy may lead to less profit in the long-term.

Developers set certain specifications (there's all different kinds of things) and can blacklist certain devices for Android as far as I know. 

You're making a lot of assumptions at the moment when there's been no definitive news you can't play on this device. I would wait until the game is out, and see if you can purchase. If there is no option to on your device then this means it is not supported as far as I know.

The compatibility list is not exhaustive of what devices can play the game.

[Gerara]

Thank you  for the answer Lucas. For sure there is no other option. I will wait and see if my device can play the game. I will be extremely disappointed if FMT 19 is not available for my device and I do not plan to buy a new, cheaper and probably not better in terms of specs tablet in order to play it. I could understand why a noname device is not included in the compatibility list, but here we are talking about SONY.  I assume, you are curious why  sony tablets are not in the list this year.

[Lucas]

5 minutes ago, Gerara said:

I assume, you are curious why  sony tablets are not in the list this year.

Not really, I don't find Android to be consumer friendly (except being fairly cheap) so have avoided anything to do with Android devices outside of games testing. 

Stuff like this is exactly why, as a tablet user you probably bought Android, were sold a "good product" with a bunch of meaningless stats and numbers, and quite rightly you expect something like FM Touch to be available (or some other game). 

This is why I've preferred Apple devices for Tablet because at least you know what you are getting, there are fewer devices and its much easier for developers of apps to communicate compatibility of devices through the App Store in the app description. 

With Google Play, that's not really the case - though it should prevent you from being able to buy the game if your device doesn't support it.

I also consider Android to be a waste of time and a nightmare to work with, too, but that's another debate/discussion entirely.

[Luke Rumble]

Not sure if it was mentioned already, I may have missed it. But non-compatible devices are blocked in the Google Play Store backend, so there will be a message on the store page when you go to buy the game saying that 'your device is not compatible' and you won't be able to purchase.

[Lucas]

Just now, Luke Rumble said:

Not sure if it was mentioned already, I may have missed it. But non-compatible devices are blocked in the Google Play Store backend, so there will be a message on the store page when you go to buy the game saying that 'your device is not compatible' and you won't be able to purchase.

Pretty much what I was referring to, cheers for clarifying 

[Gerara]

You meam devices that are not in the compatibility list or devices that does not meet the specs required?

[Luke Rumble]

Devices that are not in the compatibility list. I have liaised with the Tablet team and the Sony Z4 has been tested in house this cycle and it didn't pass checks to a sufficient standard for it to be deemed compatible, this was mainly down to specific Z4 crashes that didn't reproduce on other devices. We don't release a minimum spec list for FMT Tablet as this isn't indicative of what devices you are able to play the game on, for instance some better Android devices will encounter problems that devices that have 'lower specs' might not have, like in this scenario for example.

[Gerara]

In fact this is something new and different from what Lucas mentioned and makes me really sad. Sony Z4 is blacklisted / blocked because there are some crashes.Is there any chance to find what causes the crashes and make FMT19 available for Sony Z4 in the future  after release? FMT18 had no crashes, while there were issues with Samsung S2 that were solved after release as far as I can remember. Luke, do you think that  its high specs and the fact that is a high-end Sony product and not a noname one, developers should try to fix the issue and not just blaklist it?If Samsung S4 or  new IPAD has crashes next year in FMT 20, will be blacklisted/ blocked or SI believes that FMT  fans on android devices are rich people that can afford to buy new device every year? Please try to find what causes the game  crashes, optimise the app and add Sony Z4 to the compatibility list. Thank you

[Lucas]

5 minutes ago, Gerara said:

In fact this is something new and different from what Lucas mentioned and makes me really sad. Sony Z4 is blacklisted / blocked because there are some crashes.Is there any chance to find what causes the crashes and make FMT19 available for Sony Z4 in the future  after release? FMT18 had no crashes, while there were issues with Samsung S2 that were solved after release as far as I can remember. Luke, do you think that  its high specs and the fact that is a high-end Sony product and not a noname one, developers should try to fix the issue and not just blaklist it?If Samsung S4 or  new IPAD has crashes next year in FMT 20, will be blacklisted/ blocked or SI believes that FMT  fans on android devices are rich people that can afford to buy new device every year? Please try to find what causes the game  crashes, optimise the app and add Sony Z4 to the compatibility list. Thank you

I don't work for SI so can only work on the same assumptions as the information currently available. I no longer work for SI so not privy to internal testing of individual devices. 

It's unfortunate this is the case for the Sony Z4, but I'm sure the team looked into any issues reported internally and the decision wouldn't have been taken lightly.

[Luke Rumble]

10 minutes ago, Gerara said:

developers should try to fix the issue and not just blaklist it?

I can assure you that we have been trying hard to rectify crashes that have occurred and didn't just blacklist it as soon as one happened. However, at some point a decision has to be made about whether the product can be of a sufficient standard that we are happy to release and unfortunately for the Z4 in this cycle it wasn't.

10 minutes ago, Gerara said:

Please try to find what causes the game  crashes, optimise the app and add Sony Z4 to the compatibility list. Thank you

Unfortunately the Sony Z4 won't be added to the compatibility list for FMT19.

[Gerara]

Sad news .  I cannot really accept that devices with lower specs such as 2gb ram instead of 3 for Z4, will play FMT with no crashes and the Sony tablet will not. Unfortunately, I assume that the developers could do more to overcome the specific crash issues in the long term. 

My sony device did not have  issues with any game or app so far. My son plays pubg mobile ,in high graphics mode, without any issue. I hope that SI developers can make it work. Give it one more try please. Thanks

[Lucas]

5 minutes ago, Gerara said:

Sad news .  I cannot really accept that devices with lower specs such as 2gb ram instead of 3 for Z4, will play FMT with no crashes and the Sony tablet will not. Unfortunately, I assume that the developers could do more to overcome the specific crash issues in the long term. 

My sony device did not have  issues with any game or app so far. My son plays pubg mobile ,in high graphics mode, without any issue. I hope that SI developers can make it work. Give it one more try please. Thanks

The answer's been given now I'm afraid and as both I and Luke have repeatedly said, it is not down to a min spec sheet. 

It's unfortunate and a shame its not going to work on your device. All games are made differently and it doesn't really make any sense to compare pubg with FM, they have nothing to do with each other. Sorry you're unable to play the game.

[Gerara]

It is definetely a shame for the developers.-

[jpmwood]

10 hours ago, Gerara said:

It is definetely a shame for the developers.-

With all due respect mate, Lucas and Luke have taken time out to clearly and comprehensively answer your questions, and you haven't exactly been gracious in your responses.

If I were you, I'd cut your losses and move on 

[Gerara]

Ofc I will move on, but I have to express my opinion about an issue that affects me .  If I were you, I would not spend time to write something , just to say another person what to do. 

[Lucas]

5 minutes ago, Gerara said:

Ofc I will move on, but I have to express my opinion about an issue that affects me .  If I were you, I would not spend time to write something , just to say another person what to do. 

Loud and clear  

SI would like to support more devices where possible but there comes a point where decisions have to be made in order for a product to be released. 

FM Touch is available on 2nd November for iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch, and you can purchase on PC / Mac separately.

Thanks for taking the time to explain and get in touch.