Crysis sales in crisis; UT3 gets fragged too

And Crysis could run in 4D if Crytek would learn to harness the power of the CELL BROADBAND ENGINE®.

FPS games belong on PCs, except for the few that are specifically designed for a console (Halo 3 for example). Saying Crysis belongs on 360/PS3 instead of the PC is like saying Street Fighter 4 belongs on PC instead of 360/PS3.

Well, sounds like you just bought a shitty PC to be honest.

Honestly, buying a name brand computer is like buying a name brand... I can't even think of a proper analogy, but it's fucking retarded.

Right now, go to tigerdirect. Look at the Systemax warhawk, or whatever build-to-order variation they have now. For under $1300 you can configure a system that can max Crysis. If you built it yourself, it'd be under $900. Good job paying $800 for garbage!

Rebel Razer,

As far as the technology's concerned, the Xbox 360 and PS3 (disregarding the BD-ROM) are overpriced for what they are. The GPU of either one wouldn't have even made the cut as a mid-range card back last year, or even the later part of 2005; 128-bit GPUs with roughly 8 ROPs is considered extremely low-end. A $179.99 Radeon HD 3850 could run circles around both systems; Unreal Tournament 3 can be played over 60 FPS with the card with everything maxed out but AA (Unreal Tournament 3 doesn't support AA on its own but you can force the hardware to do it through ATI's control panel) at a native 1920x1220. If you think either console's port can hit that resolution natively and have a playable framerate, think again. As far as your $800 PC's concerned...why didn't you just build one? It's not all that hard to do (you're just plugging in cables for the most part) and you get much a better bang for your buck. All the parts are warrantied by the manufacturer, some of which are lifetime warranties.

Crysis was not developed with the current generation of videocards in mind, that much should be obvious. NVIDIA announced last year that they would be releasing the successor of the Geforce 8800 line this December and their new architecture would be capable of processing 1 teraflop (not theoretical, but real world performance); consider that a Geforce 8800 Ultra's ($550+) flop count is actually lower than that of an Radeon HD 3850 ($179.99) and you can see it's a massive performance improvement.

ATI, though, released an expensive paperweight (HD 2900XT) several months late and wasn't competive in the low end and midrange until last month (HD 3850 and HD 3870); they don't have a high end card. Instead of releasing a new, vastly improved and more powerful architecture, NVIDIA sandbagged their new line. Why kill off their current products when they are A) making record profits for the company and B) still hold the performance crown? NVIDIA simply gave us faster, cheaper refreshes of what's currently available because ATI's only recently been able to put its game face on without looking functionally retarded.

As such, the new hardware and vastly increased level of performance Crytek was banking on for the release of their game (there's no doubt in mind that this is what happened) never materialized. That being said, the game will run well at Very High settings on recent (recent being year and month old) hardware if people would just reduce the resolution to around 720p; any lower than that, and it can become CPU bound. People don't want to do that, so they get crappy performance. You can't always have your cake and eat it.

Having said that, this is really no different than the summer-fall of 2003 and early 2004; the people who are bitching about hardware requirements now were the same ones bitching back then. The Radeon 9800 was the king of the hill, but games like Doom 3, Half-life 2, and Far Cry were unplayable at very high settings at high resolutions; it wasn't until the Geforce 6/Radeon X800 lines were introduced that you could. It wasn't until a generation AFTER that you could play most of those games above 70 FPS in a single card configuration with most of their eye candy maxed out at resolutions like 2500x1600; there's a reason why NVIDIA and ATI ditched 256 MB RAM for their high-end and opted for twice the amount.

thats what you get for buying a pre-built pc. I payed the same for mine and I max the game out.

8800GT: 250$
E6600 C2D: 200$
2GB RAM: 50$
MOTHERBOARD: 100$
POWER SUPPLY: 100$
REST OF THE SHITE (DVD, CASE): 100$

Look at that, 900$ for a computer that can run the game at Very High (1024x768 resolution)!

Unless you got a very, very fancy monitor with your PC, you got screwed to hell and back!

@Anubis

At 1024x768 with my 8800GT and E6600 C2D the game still runs like 30fps average... so yeah year old hardware isn't gonna run the game at Very High, unless you go 640x480.

thats very true. I bet you a pretty large number of those 8800GT's sold were bought so the user could play crysis. Mine was.

You're absolutely right. Because if I was a pc developer I would totally love making only 90,000 in sales instead of the 500,000 one could make if it was on a console.

Vegeta, I'm sure they would have loved more sales, and they certainly deserved them. Piracy is serious business, though, with PC games-- particularly those aimed at "hardcore" gamers, those who can actually work a torrent. But, piracy and low sales aside, Crysis is selling PC hardware, and you know Intel, nvidia, etc are paying lots for the advertising/marketing. If someone pirates Crysis, but buys a new rig to play it...

You won't regret it. Best singleplayer experience ever, bar none, and some hella-addictive deathmatch.

Honestly, I don't blame Crytek for locking out the DX10 features, and this thread is proving why it was necessary. EA and Crytek probably weren't expecting ridiculous sales, although most likely they wanted more than this. Microsoft probably paid tons for that awesome display of supposed "DX 10"-- offsetting assholes who pirate it.

Oh, and to continue that point: the fact that these features can be unlocked in DX9 is definitely a bone thrown to us by Crytek. They're smart, they know how modders work. They could have easily coded it to block DX10 variables in DX9, but they didn't. They wanted us to unlock it ;)

"Other than that I'm pretty grumpy about the whole lock out the highest settings for XP/dx9 cards crap, this for no technical reason, my dx9 card and Windows 2000 (yes, Win2k, screw you MS lol) handle the 'god rays' just fine."

You do realize that your DX9 card doesn't even have the hardware to run DX10 ? This isn't some corporate tactic, it's just how the cards were built.

Crysis just happens to have leftover code in the game from before it was changed over to DX10, and the very-high settings mod takes advantage of this. It emulates almost all of the dx10 features, minus some of the water effects.

Pretty much any DX10 in XP 'fix' you see is some sort of emulation, which isn't true DX10, or 100% of it's features.

As far as not coding DX10 into XP from the get-go, it makes sense if you think about it, and not just scream "M$ sux0rs!" Just the fact that DX10 is a total rebuild of the API, is in itself alone a huge project. But having to code it for XP, not to mention patch XP to utilize it, would of taken tons of manpower for pretty much no return. XP owners are probably going to be using XP for a long time. Microsoft wants to make money on Vista, not XP.

"For pretty much no return"? So having just about every PC gamer have access to DX10 is not worth anything, only sales of Vista is worthwhile? You should work for microsoft.

And they are basically the same effects, regardless of if you run it in DX9 or DX10. Vista is a gimmick-- face it.

Locking out physics-- which are performed by a CPU-- and time of day, which isn't any more demanding than regular sunshine, to DX10 was purely a marketing move. Neither of those things require DX10 hardware, let alone DX10 itself.

"You do realize that your DX9 card doesn't even have the hardware to run DX10 ?"

Do you realize that we have yet to see any justification for buying a dx10 card or Vista, and that the high/very high lockout is a total fabrication to make it look as if there is one? Thats exactly my point, my dx9 card cannot do dx10, but if I had a much better dx9 card or a dx10 card with xp I would get identical visuals with a better framerate! For cripes sake, wheres the massive improvement in efficiency promised? Wheres anything showing Vista is so much better for gaming (and doesn't just suck up more resouces to slow games down) and will it be here before 2010? This was supposed to be the big showcase, the dx10 game that would justify your insane investment on 600 dollar vid cards and a overpriced OS. And the only difference Vista makes in the end is reducing performance. Its all lies, like saying Halo 1 character models are the epitome of dx9 while implying that only dx10 can achieve the character models in Crysis. Oh well, party on MS, theres one born every minute.

Oh, I see. You're one of those. And by "those" I mean console zealots that constantly tout that the PC is dead.

It isn't.
It never will be.

Kudos to Crysis developers for pushing the envelope. Crysis pushes current PC's much further than Doom III and Half-Life 2 did to PC's back in their day.

Doom 3 pushed graphics forward much harder than Crysis, did or ever will.

After all, it was the first game to ever use per pixel shading/lighting, which has now become the norm.

It was able to be run on more systems, however, because John Carmack thought ahead and is also a genius, so you know.

Anyway... Vegeta- fuck you.

I'd disagree on that one, this engine is very tight technically, when you consider the draw distance and deforming trees and things going on that the 360 would sort of 'fuzz out.' Since I do have a midrange card (tho ppl usually don't do their homework and buy shit cards like a x1300 for the same price) I'd say the image quality I can get 20 fps out of is stuff I just couldn't see the 360 doing, and what amazes me is how smooth that 20ps is, somehow this engine runs as good at that framerate as other games do at 30, not nearly as many wild trips downward and upward creating loss of control. I have utmost respect for crytek, I hope someone uses this engine to actually tell a decent story. If I have to endure one more game where you're in some elite paramilitary unit and theres some tightly wound psycho guy in the squad who is always shooting his mouth off (who in this game is named... Psycho, god someone buy them a thesaurus) I'm going to puke.

And screw you spoiler alert guy, its all in the opening fmv, as I said I only have the demo.

"in order to make Crysis playable you have to drop a lot of eye candy... what's the point then"

What's the point? How about gameplay! The problem is, for all of Crysis' graphical innovations, there are no real gameplay innovations. Crysis is just a tech demo.

Man, I couldn't disagree more. I love the gameplay in Crysis. It is such a refinement of the FPS genre as a whole, and then the suit powers are just executed perfectly. I've started to miss them when I play other FPS games. Honestly, you start to forget about the graphics once you're actually playing-- which is why I think a graphically reduced 360 version could thrive... the graphics aren't the best part.

And a mid-range card bought this year *cough* $250 8800 GT *cough* CAN play Crysis on high at high resolutions.

Did you play the game Evan? The open-end combat is amazing, and the suit powers just add to the possible approaches. I could go cloak and take the guys out one by one, or I can switch to speed mode grab my shotgun and run to them, shoot a couple, and run back into cover. It's all very exciting. The physics in the game also amaze me, seriously everything can break, it's awesome. I spent like 15 minutes just throwing crates into the air and shooting them, clay shooting simulation plx!

Slaziman and Jeff, I hate to break it to you but when it comes to video games most people are very frugal. Why should people want to spend $700 in order to play Crysis when they can play Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 on a 360 for $350. Why pay $700 to play Crysis if you can play Killzone on the PS3 for $400?

You two guys pretty much represent the very first generation of hardcore gamers, and right now that population is very small and is also very zealous. That combo makes you guys come off as very egotistical and elitist and it's not helping your arguments. That's not a bad thing and I'm sure you guys just hate the unappreciation of PC gaming, but it would be best if you guys checked your tone before making everyone else feel like uneducated morans.

Anyway, even if beating Crysis unlocked immortality, most people wouldn't be willing to plop down $700 to purchase a computer just so they may play video games.

So, are all those other games tanking, too?

wtf does croteam have to do with this? No one is talking about Serious Sam here...

Sorry... i always mix up croteam and their cro-engine and crytek and their cry-engine.

Since farcry, serious sam and crysis were all essentially engine demos of large-scale environments, and obviously aimed at getting others to use their engine.

I might be wrong, but i don't remember any games tat did for either.

I disagree 100%. First off, as long as FPS continue to improve and expand into different directions, I won't get bored. It's my genre of my choice.

And secondly, UT3 is a helluva lot different than any other FPS out there (except from previous UTs). There will always be a niche for that fast, crazy, amazing gameplay. Sure, it is basically just an update to ut2004-- but hell, I wanted one, and I love all the gameplay changes.

Crysis, on the other hand, just takes the FPS genre and makes it perfect. Maybe I'm just a fanboy for it, but everything about it just feels perfect.

This game on 360 would = lol.

Crytek already said it would have to be shaved down a bit to work.

How is it good for PS3/Xbox 360 development? Neither system would be able to handle the game at medium settings at a playable framerate no matter how optimized the port could be; there's simply way too much going on (the incredible draw distance, HDR-lighting, physics, etc.) for a console to handle it. The only "Cry"-anything a console can actually handle decently would be a game using the first Crytek engine because it's been out for almost 5 years and doesn't have nearly as many features as its successor...but who wants to pay $60 for a copy of just one game that's built on an old engine?

You highly underestimate the need for a PC developer to push hardware. Without someone like Crytek bringing high-end hardware to its knees, there won't be much in the way of GPU innovation; a Geforce 8800 GTS 512 can run almost every game out there with all the eye candy maxed out, but it's STILL just a refresh of a product you could buy last year. If the constant evolution of the PC's GPUs stagnates, the Xbox 720 and PS4 will be no where near as powerful as they could be. They'd be faster than what's currently available, but not by a margin large enough to justify their prices.

Why is this? Because Microsoft relies heavily on ATI and Sony relies heavily on NVIDIA to design their GPUs as neither company has the experience or engineers to do it on their own. If NVIDIA and ATI see no need to release more powerful hardware, they simply release slightly faster and more efficient refreshes of existing products instead of introducing more powerful architectures. Yeah an HD 3870's a fantastic buy at $219.99...but it's still marginally faster than the HD 2900 XT. Yeah, a Geforce 8800 GT's a fantastic buy...but it's only faster than a year old card (Geforce 8800 GTS 640 MB) by a 10% margin. I don't want my next gen console purchase to rely on 3-4 year old hardware or get stuck buying PC hardware at top dollar with crappy performance because people like you want to force PC developers to jump to consoles.

That being said, don't update EVERY year; you're just wasting your money. If you wait two to three years to upgrade your videocard (because most games aren't CPU bound), then it becomes a much more worthwhile experience. A $150 videocard from 2009 or 2010 is guaranteed to be faster than a card you could buy for $600 today. Compare an X1950 Pro released last year to the fastest NVIDIA or ATI product released in 2004 to see my point. Assuming an Xbox 720 or PS4 comes out in 2010, you'll have only spent $150 for higher performing hardware.

Crytek can afford to take a loss on their game because, like Epic or iD, they license their engines to other people as middleware; a surprising number of people are still or will be using the first CryEngine in their games. In fact, the bulk of any game's development costs will probably revolve around creating a new in-house engine if one's not licensed from a different developer. Gears of War cost only $2,000,000 more to make than a high-end Wii game, and most of its costs were tied to building up the Unreal 3 engine into something usable.

People have already lined up to use the CryEngine2, some of which aren't game-related in anyway, shape, of form. Two real estate companies are licensed to use the CryEngine2 to build almost photo realistic digital, interactive models of the houses they have for sale so potential clients can check them out online. Another company's using it to show what buildings will look like after construction, while two more have licensed the engine to be used in education. Have any of Epic's or iD's engines been used for this? Nope. Oh...and that 80,000 unit quote probably doesn't count copies of the game bundled with PC hardware; you can't buy a videocard now without having Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Company of Heroes, or Lost Planet bundled with it.

As others have said, it's sold really well overseas and is pushing PC hardware sales like you wouldn't believe. Most people are upgrading their hardware (CPUs and videocards), to play the game at High or Very High settings; it's almost being used a benchmark to gauge a PC's performance because if a computer does well with Crysis, it'll handle anything else you can throw at it with ease (except Lost Planet or Supreme Commander).

^^if ur comment is longer than the post u need to examin ur life