Crytek turns back on PC exclusivity, cites piracy

Piracy my butt.
First, they've already said their sales did just fine. (over a million)

Second, I hate how these companies equate all piracy into lost sales...idiots. Just because someone pirated a game does not mean that if piracy wasn't an option they would actually buy the game. Piracy does not directly equate into "lost sales". For example, when I buy a game I always buy used, so if I were to pirate a game (hypothetically speaking) it would be at no loss to them since I only buy used anyway.

Crysis looked like recycled, unoriginal garbage, that's why I didn't play it.

The PC gaming industry has lost everyone (myself included) with the ridiculous cost requirements of upgrading a PC every few years.

You go through a few rounds of that and you have more PC's than a reasonable household can ever use.

I bet $500 that those same people who bash the game and blame high system specs are the same people who pirated it.

It's kinda funny how quickly peoples opinions change about a game company, HUH.

Crysis was awesome IMO, the game may have had a generic story but it still ROCKED MY SOCKS.

Crysis's problem was not piracy or the system requirements (I could get it to run just fine on a four year old system at medium settings). The problem is that the game is generic and came out about the same time as the Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, and Unreal Tournament 3, which are all far better games.

A lot of PC devs are blaming piracy for poor sales these days. I don't buy it. Piracy has always been rampant and easy on the PC, even during its prime. In fact I'd say it was easier and more rampant back then, but I'm basing that personal experience (and I haven't pirated anything since highschool).

I don't know why Crysis didn't sell, but I know why I didn't buy it: All the hype about its hardware requirements. I'll definitely be buying it at some point but since I'm uncertain how it'll run on my machine, I don't really feel like rushing out and getting it.

Piracy isn't the reason Crysis hasn't sold well. It isn't the steep hardware requirements, either. Steep hardware requirements like high end videocards in SLI or Crossfire can be perfectly justifiable if the game runs with all the image quality settings maxed out at super high resolutions ( think 2500x1600) while maintaining a silk smooth framerate *cough* UT3 and CoD4 *cough*. What essentially killed Crysis's chance of selling well initially (as well as for the long term) is that it was/is an extremely unoptimized game released in the same time frame as two comparable FPS shooters that offered similar visuals with fantastic performance on even crappy hardware (UT3 and CoD4).

Unreal Tournament 3 runs with every image quality settings set to High with no AA (because UT3 does not include AA by itself) and 16x AF on an HD 3870 around 50 average FPS at 1920x1220. Call of Duty 4 runs at an average 45 FPS at 1920x1220 with 16x AF and all setting set to high but dynamic lights, texture detail, or depth of field (those are set to normal); still, it looks fantastic. Crysis can only run at all High settings at 1280x1024 with no AA and no AF with 4 HD 3870's and averages below 30 FPS. That's not a typo.

And before anyone says anything, the reason I chose a midrange videocard is that it's far more likely to be in your PC than a high end product just based on price (in the HD 3870's case, around $180.00). Still, the comparison is valid. Crysis, compared to the two games it was competing with (and still is as CoD4 has been selling strong since it was released), was/is an unoptimized mess.

Single videocard performance sucked and multi-GPU configurations like SLI or Crossfire offered a performance increase so insignificant it wasn't even worth considering. Two (now three, I think) patches later, performance for single videocards has increased 10% on average and multi-GPU scalability has increased to the point that it's worthwhile. Still, Crytek has a ways to go before they can pat themselves on the back.

In a nutshell, what we have now in Crysis is what we should have 6 months ago. Maybe if Crytek had spent the same amount of effort optimizing their game as they had hyping the hell out of it online or giving interviews, it would've sold far better.

Regardless of the reason, it's pretty clear that the glory days of PC gaming are over. PC game sales have been in steady decline for years - no PC FPS has touched HalfLife's sales, a game from 10 years ago! Most weeks' new game releases now include only shovelware. Even multi-platform titles for the PC are diminishing - EA isn't even going to release Madden '09 to the PC, and Madden games have always be ported to every system possible! The only "games" left on the PC that sell multi-millions of copies are The Sims and World of Warcraft.

Designing a game to cater to people who won't buy it is a sure sign of success.

Give this a read, and realize these companies that blame pirates and force DRM upon customers are ultimately biting the hand that feeds them.

http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512

Why don't they just release it on Steam if they are so worry about privacy...

Crysis came out amidst a GLUT of high-profile, high-quality FPS games. It launched with advanced press emphasizing how amazing the graphics were and how you'd need the latest and greatest hardware to appreciate said graphics.

Do you know a big reason why people buy Xbox 360s and PS3s? Knowing that a game will work with their hardware AS ADVERTISED. For the cost of a decent video card, you can get a console. And you don't have to worry about upgrading your OS, or buying a new mainboard for the new video card, or downloading new drivers or upgrading unrelated components or software to prevent conflicts...and so on and so forth. People just want to plug-and-play.

Crysis made it's high requirements a SELLING POINT. That backfired on them. I know I didn't even give it a second glance when they made it clear that I'd need to drop several hundred dollars to enjoy their game. I have no idea how good a game it is other than passing reviews...but I DO KNOW that it came out amidst a host of excellent FPS games that ran fine on the equipment I already have. Games with sharp graphics and compelling stories. Games like Bioshock, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Metroid Prime 3. Hell, even on the PC side, there was a glut of games with stuff like Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War coming out (and yes, GoW isn't an FPS...but I'd argue it cannibalizes the same market).

The fact is that Crysis was pushed as an engine more than a game. Hell, all I know about it is that it features guys in weird muscle suits who have nanotech super-powers, I guess. Other than being in a jungle, I have no idea where they or what they're doing. That's a failure of marketing. Even a game like Dark Sector did a good job of telling me who you were and what you were doing...and I all know about that game is from commercials.

I'm sure piracy cost them some sales, but I sincerely doubt that it's responsible for the games failure in the market.

Gah, another dev using piracy as a scapegoat. Please. I'd have to say it's due more to system requirements and the fact that it was released next to three FPS games that blew it out of the water in terms of gameplay.

For those that want to cite "PC gaming is dead!!1!", well, you don't know what you're talking about. People say that all the time, have BEEN saying that for the past, like, fifteen years and companies to this day still make PC games. I think this is the third or fourth time that I can remember where the popular concensus has been that PC gaming is going to die. It didn't the last few times people were "sure", it isn't going to die any time soon. And don't cite sales figures, 'cause until they start counting digital distribution, they don't show the whole picture.

While I'm at it, I might as well ask why the console fanboys seem so eager to see the PC market die? It doesn't make any sense. The console market has been the mainstream in terms of gaming for probably close to two decades because it is so much more accessible. What do you console fanboys have to prove? Do you really feel the need to troll THAT badly?

PC gaming will never die because of three things; MMOs, FPSs, and RTSs. MMOs is pretty much a given and until consoles truly become something akin to a PC, they aren't getting them. (I shudder to think what playing a MMO with a controller would be like...) As for FPSs, don't give me that crap that controllers are just as good as keyboard/mouse. It's not my fault you can't aim without auto-targeting. And until consoles can, on a regular basis, support 32+ player rooms, I'll stick to PCs thank you. And the idea that a RTS can play just as well with a controller than keyboard/mouse is just asinine. LoTR did a fair job, but it doesn't come close to comparing.

And even if consoles catch up with the PC on these genres, the PC devs will have created a new one to keep the industry afloat. Just like all the other times the market was "dying".

Are you sure it's piracy and not the fact that 5 people on Earth actually have PC's capable to run the game?

Wait a minute, you make a game that has performance issues on a machine with 3 8800 GTXs in SLI and a quad core cpu, and the problem is piracy??

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ces-nvidia-3-way-sli-crysis,4635.html

Trust me, anyone with the hardware to do crysis justice isn't going to skimp the $50 for the software. They're just looking for a scapegoat.

I admit, I downloaded Crysis. I played it for about 2 hours, got bored, and uninstalled it. Normally I buy games I download for multiplayer if I'm impressed enough to complete the single player portion of the game. Crysis simply didn't do it for me. The only thing piracy did was save me from wasting 60 bucks on a game that I wouldn't have gotten full use of.

And my PC is capable of running the game on high settings, but even with a great PC, the engine bogged my machine down so hard I had to reboot after playing constantly. Not to mention the bugs and crashes I had. The CryEngine itself looks great, but performs absolutely horrid.

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/crysis/tool/21700.html

This tool will optimise your crysis setup.

I personally don't think this game was intended to be run on full settings at the present level of hardware.
PC users had trouble maxing out Far Cry to begin with until later DX9 grfx cards became advanced enough.
It [crysis] still looks amazing at high settings in vista and blows away other FPS competitors technically on the visual side. To me because it looks and acts so realistically I get an amazing sensation from playing it. Its a solid tactical shooter also. Nothing special in this regard but has some sublime moments. ie Coming out of the alien ship when the forest has frozen is simply sublime. On another more negative note ...Whats with the trolls wanting PC gaming dead? why?

Piracy? No. Personally i use piracy as a form of "Renting" because even when/if i had a console, i bought maybe 2 games a year anyway... The game was mediocre at best if you couldn't play on even medium settings, its graphics were its only real selling point. The game? TERRIBLE! The nanosuit and on-the-fly weapon modding? Awesome. But people aren't gonna play a game because of that. Also the weapon-swaying while zoomed at any state is overkill. The game lacked story, gameplay, freedom, weapons and vehicles, multiplayer somewhat excluded from that statement.
I'm still baffled as to how the game got such high reviews/scores. Yes, the hype was huge, but thats not a reason the game was badly recieved. It was just sub-par with current games, which offer better singleplayer, and much, much better multiplayer. Tough luck Crytek. Please do better with Far Cry 2.