Crysis sales in crisis; UT3 gets fragged too

by Alexander Sliwinski on Dec 14th 2007 9:44PM

Perhaps this can be considered a lesson for game developers eager to deliver tomorrow's game technology today: Crysis hit the PC market with an exoskeleton-enhanced thud. The critically praised -- but processing intensive -- title sold a disappointing 86,633 units in the States following its Nov. 13 release.

Holding hands with Crysis is Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 which sold an even more disappointing 33,995 units following its Nov. 19 release. Although not a pixel pushing monster on the level of say, oh ... Crysis, the Unreal Engine 3 game is still a beast in an already crowded genre. At the very least UT3 will make up some sales with the recently released PS3 version and the future Xbox 360 version.

We're ready for that Crysis console announcement whenever you are, EA.

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Tags: crysis, npd, PC, PS3, sales, ut3, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (200)

I have UT3 for PS3 and I think its really fun, though I don't play too many keyboard and mouse games in general. I actually haven't played it with the controller. But yeah, there aren't too many people online with it right now, but I really do enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to the mods coming in the future.

30,000 copies.

I think Earthbound sold more than that.

I'm pretty sure Zack and Wiki and God Hand managed to beat that, too

As a 360 owner, this info makes me really happy. Maybe now Epic can find the time to finish the 360 version of UT3 for the 360. The poor sales of Crysis also means that they will probably think about porting the game to the 360, the PS3, or both.

I used to be a die hard pc gamer, but I can't afford to keep upgrading my system all of the time. Even when you do upgrade, some rich kid can spend $600 on the best card out there and play the game on a resolution that I couldn't even dream of. This is why I prefer console gaming now. It is a level playing field. I buy a console and deal with the fact that it will be relevant for 4-5 years. No upgrading - just new games.

No. The poor sales of Crysis will influence them NOT to release it on 360. They've said all along that they will consider ports based on how well the PC version does. Sucks for console gamers most of all. =)

no, they'll be desperate to recoup dev money, and they can sell another ~500k copies on 360 if they market it right and don't release it in the middle of a bunch of other fps's

plus, i hear ports to 360 don't take too long or cost that much extra

Gonk, your logic sounds beautiful, and it's clearly what people on here want to believe. But the devs have stated multiple times that they will think about the possibility of ports once they see how successful the PC version is. I hope you're right, though. I want nothing more than for 360 owners to get a (watered down) version of Crysis, so that everyone can start praising Crysis for the amazing game it is rather than jealously despising it.

I have a Core2Duo with a nVidia 7600GT and I can only run the game at settings that make it no better looking than FarCry.... that's the problem... You have to have a $400-$600 video card to run the game at anything descent looking...most people are in that boat... note to pc programmers ... be sure your game works with the lowest common denominator of gamer systems.... if you target high end systems... your sales will be low...

Because the 8800 GT doesn't cost $250.

I tried it on a Athlon X2 5000 with a 7600 and it still looked really good (Much better than far cry, and light years ahead of (Vista joke that is) Halo2). But after dropping the $250 on a 8800 GT I can say the demo runs beautifully.

The problem with Crysis (which I'll buy next year) and UT3 (which I regret buying this year) is that other than the graphics they don't provide any exciting reason to play them. Crysis has the sandbox, which some people love... But UT3 feels incredibly dated in terms of gameplay, not as fun as UT2004 by a long shot.

You don't think perhaps that the reason they get access to the latest technology from the likes of NVidia and develop software to take advantage of it might have something to do with making people buy those $400-500 graphics cards?

If every PC game was made compatible with the lowest common denominator, we'd still be playing Wolfenstein 3D-alikes.

8800GT for the win sucka

But its the 7600 holding it back alil, it runs fine on medium and thats all you need for any game, the meat of any game is the gameplay not the graphics.

One day we'll look back on Crysis and say, "Hah, how did we ever play such primitive games?!"

Needless to say, that day will be sometime in the year 2045.

I said that ten years ago when strategy games were still popular. FPS games are boring as hell.

Screw Crysis. I want Dungeon Keeper 3.

I think people have hit it dead on when they've said that this is because casual and middlecore gamers don't have systems that will run these games, and the hardcore gamers who do don't buy games.

Piracy of PC games is laughably easy. No mod chips needed, just download the game, copy a couple files, and you're there.

Very very hardcore PC gamers buy games anymore; I think we'll see games like Crysis getting made to push hardware sales rather than software sales (if that's not what Crysis was meant to do already; it's hard to ignore the fact that the game is intentionally sabotaged to not be fully functional on systems with DX9 cards or Windows XP).

Wow, grammar errors galore.

*Very hardcore gamers -don't- buy games anymore.

Or maybe the problem is that Crysis and UT3 are relying too damn much on their fancy nuclear-fueled engine technology to sell the game that the publishers forgot to... you know, properly promote the title beyond the hardcore audience.

Really, try looking for ads outside an issue of Maximum PC.

Burnt Meatloaf-- you're a fucking retard.

UT3 was specifically designed to run on JUST ABOUT ANYTHING. Your mom's shitty Compaq with intel integrated graphics probably could manage well enough.

Say what you want about Crysis, but try and lump UT3 in as hardware-intensive. It's not, at all. It can be maxed at 100+ FPS with today's high-end hardware, and played very well on just about garbage.

@ Jeff, your basic PC is, by no means, prepared for playing PC games, hell my PC doesn't do it right even when i meet the recommended requirements

My PC would probably struggle with WoW, and it has 256 MB main and 64 MB V-RAM, which is definitely enough on paper

I am running a duo core 3.2Ghz with a dual GeForce 7800GTX SLI and I can only run the Crysis demo on low! That is NUTS! To hell with that! I will probably buy UT3 for my PS3. I need to find at least one good game for it. lol! So far my 360 is my most used rig.

Then something in your comp is fried or you have been downloading too much porn.

Maybe you should drop the resolution from 2560x1600 to something normal?

I really don't think Crysis was a huge project for Crytek anyway. I get this feeling like they came out with a new engine and just wanted to use it. I'd be very curious to find out how long it took them to produce it.

It's a great game, and it's definitely beautiful. In the next year or two to come I think awesome things will come from the new engine.

By the by, I have an 8800GT and I played it on high at 1680x1050 and 2xAA. I think "very high" would most definitely require 8800s on SLI, but the rumors you hear are pretty exaggerated. I tried with an overclocked 7900GS and it ran fine at medium. I consider that a victory considering it's a last gen card. I'd try it with my laptop's 6800 Go, but it runs Ubuntu instead of Linux now :(

I hope you mean "instead of windows". Since Ubuntu is Linux after all.

Er, yeah, I meant instead of Windows. Thanks :)

But farcry was also a demo of their engine.. and i can't remember any other games using that engine.

I would say that there probably are a huge amount of people playing pirated UT3. The bots are just so good most people could happily just play them all day not caring about having a legit copy to play online with. And with WoW having taken over PC gaming since the last UT game came out, a lot of the people who would previously have played games like UT3 and Crysis now play nothing but WoW, so that's another big blow to the sales of both games.

I'm running Crysis at 1280x1024 at Medium settings on most, low on a few, with a 3.4 GHz P4, 2GB RAM, and a X1950 Pro AGP.

Runs fine for me, very playable, awesome frackin' game.

I'm running it on a Dell Dimension E521. AMD 64 X2 3400+(that's 1.9 ghz), 1 gig of ram and an overclocked 8600gt(a $100 card) and I'm able to play it fairly smoothly at 1024 x 768 with everything on medium except textures(low) and physics(high). I get a steady 30fps. I'm not here to gloat, I'm just saying that Crysis kind of gets a bad rap for being that game that "lol noone can play it because of the graphics."

I wish people would try the (free) demo of Crysis to really judge if their computer can't play it because I was shocked that I could with my (total) $700 year old computer. Try it, it's a great game.

does anyone remember a cod4 video where one of the developers(i think) was asked how Infinity Ward felt about releasing there game in a heavy fps season. And the guy replied that he is very confident that they will come out on top beating the other fps like halo3, ut3,crysis, etc.

I agree with others why crysis did so bad. It's not because the game is bad, but due to its performance requirements. They should have followed UT3 and made it more scalable. As for UT3, i' am not sure why its doing so bad. I personally am planning on purchasing it next month for pc, along with burnout paradise and a ps3.

It's kind've hard to reach high sales figures when your target audience appears to be 'other games developers who might be interested in buying our engine.'

I'm running Crysis on an Athlon 64 X2 5600, and a Radeon X1300 that I borrowed from work, at 800x600 with everything set low, except textures (medium).

It looks...not too shabby. Seriously. And it runs pretty good. Far better than I'd have expected.

I mean, I know it can look a hundred times better, but I'm enjoying it regardless.

(Waiting for a back-ordered GeForce 8800GT to arrive soon. I'll start the game over. :) I'm not /completely/ crazy, damn it.)

Anyway, since when do PC gamers not buy a game because of hefty requirements? I thought upgrading for the latest pixel-slut was the law of the land? :)

I must say i am surprized. I never once thought that making a game so high scale that 98% of my target dmeographic would be unbale to play it was a bad business model. But then again, I'm stupid.

That's what you get when you think the Holidays is the time of the year to release your game. It's too crowded. I don't get 20 games for Christmas, perhaps 3 or 4 but if they need crazy hardware to run it smoothly I'll wait until I get a better PC that can deliver.

Thats too bad about Crysis. I found it to be the best SP FPS ever (until the damn spaceship). Hopefully 100,000 copies will be enough for a sequel or an expansion pack (with less aliens, more N. Koreans).

Pirates are morons, as are most college students, who tend to be the pirates.

Errr, most college students can't afford PCs that even RUN Crysis, so I don't think piracy is going to affect them much in this case.

People said the same thing about Doom3. You know what? That game worked just fine if you turned down the graphic detail.

The problem isn't that people CAN'T run the game, it's that they don't want to play it without the pretty sparklies. A good 3D engine is supposed to scale and adapt to the hardware that's available. If Crysis can't do that, then the technology really isn't that good.

I bought UT3 and kind of regret it, The game runs fine on my computer but it feels like i'm playing the exact same game i played in 2004, 2002 and 1999 only with shinier graphics, Except this time theres no assault mode.

i think that's why sales of ut3 are so low, because it's old hat now, people moved on to halo or cod4 or whatnot

the graphics always looked great in the close-up screenshots... but in the actual gameplay shots/videos they looked like the last version.

Its great having really detailed characters... but in a game like UT3 they are never close enough or still enough to appreciate all the detail.

I think piracy is a huge factor - it's damn scary to put a PC-only game out these days, seems like a huge financial risk.

Yeah, like people never pirated games on the C64, and everyone knows piracy killed the Amiga. Everyone knows every PC game these days sells poorly.

Maybe UT3 is just overdone and Crysis is overdeveloped.

BTW, does UT3 or Crysis come with some kind of vomit-inducing copy protection, such as SecuROM? That's an easy way to kill consumer interest in a game, too.

It seemed like there were more people interested in making jokes about the supercomputer needed to run Crysis intead of realizing that the game can run fine on any decent modern system. I'm glad I didn't listen to half the crap people were saying when I bought the game.

Regarding Unreal, there were well over 60,000 downloads of UT3 from a popular bitorrent site. I never checked the number DLs of Crysis around its debut, but there are at least 10,000 people stealing it, and around the same number supplying it.

When twice the number of people are stealing your game than have have bought it, its more than just people that wouldn't buy it in the first place.

Honestly, PC games need to come with copy protection. It disgusts me that pirates are destroying my platform of choice-- if everyone were actually forced to pay for games, PC would be an extremely profitable platform-- and therefore we'd get more attention.

BioShock did the right thing. Despite all the shit they got for it, look how well it sold.

and yet you can still pirate bioshock, my roommate did

Of course you can. You can pirate steam games, too. It's just harder =P

86,633...is a lot! I never thought they would even sell 10,000 copies.

OMFG ROFLMAO I think that the Crysis developer as well as Epic needs to wake up and see where there is a solid community that would get them the sales they dream of??? Gears of War is all I need say with 4 million+ sold. I am so laughing my ass off on this one.

BTW My brand new $800 HP crawled attempting to run the demo. What a joke. Course I expected as much. Then I ran COD4 on my 360 and in 57" HDTV OMFG that was a rush of an experience. Sorry but for 1/2 the price of my PC the 360 kicks serious ass and is plenty adequate for me. I say screw Crysis till those loser Germans wake up and put it where it belongs on next gen consoles.

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Crysis sales in crisis; UT3 gets fragged too

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