As much as people would like a free Delphi, it's not going to happen. They just won't do it anymore.

I won't even bother getting involved in any "make a free version" conversations, because I've talked to them directly and they said an emphatical no every time. I didn't even bring it up myself, one time! They tried it when they were in-between (when they were called CodeGear) and to my best guess Embarcadero squashed it shortly after.

I think that they could make a new Edition of the Delphi compiler that was more comfortable and behaved the same way that those who are used to THAT tool have grown accustomed to it and make their low-end market sales (involving the game developers) that way. Make one for each major platform IDE (code editor and core essentials only) and make them single platform sell them at a low affordable code of about $50 - $100. That way they could allow you to still develop cross-platform by buying one for each platform you want to develop on. A solution that they would probably agree to if they really are interested in selling something to game developers that we may buy.

Of course this is not taking into account where ever the compiler quality and stability state is right now.