Petitioners Call for Continued Crysis PC Exclusivity

[Nathan Meunier]

Petitioners Call for Continued Crysis PC Exclusivity

A group of PC gamers have pledged to buy Crysis Warhead in hopes of convincing Electronic Arts and Crytek to continue marching the bleeding edge first-person shooter series along the path of PC exclusive righteousness. Will their wishes prevail?

A mixture of software piracy and announced [http://www.crysis-online.com/Information/System%20Requirements/] plans to move into console development with its other properties. Though the Crysis series is currently slated to remain on the PC for the time being, the developers will be keeping a watchful eye on Warhead sales in planning their next move.

Console gamers may have their fingers secretly crossed; but the potential for Crysis to move to a multiplatform format in the future is a dismal thought for some hardcore PC gaming enthusiasts. In an internet petition [http://www.petitiononline.com/bcwp/petition.html] containing 1877 digital signatures, concerned PC gamers have pledged to pick up a copy of Crysis Warhead and snub software piracy in order to prevent losing the series' PC exclusivity. The group also pledges to support Crytek and other future PC developers who stick their necks out in creating quality titles on the platform.

"With the development of Crysis 2 and the Crysis franchise's PC exclusivity resting on the success of Crysis Warhead [http://crysiswarhead.ea.com/agegate.aspx], we must insure the future of the franchise and hardcore PC development that innovates and pushes gaming technology to its limits and gives us stunning technical achievements like Crysis, Half-life 2, Far Cry, Doom 3, etc.," write the petitioners in an open letter to EA and Crytek.

The group expressed disappointment at lackluster Crysis sales, in comparison to other platform exclusive titles. They're not alone. Crytek president Cevat Yerli believes software piracy is destroying [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/83533-Crytek-Moving-to-Consoles] the PC gaming platform and has spurred the developer to move away from offering future PC exclusive titles.

"I still want to have Crysis on the PC; the dominant platform should be PC. And Crysis should be on PC," said Yerli in a recent IGN interview [http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/884/884757p1.html]. "This is a philosophical decision here. We'll see how it holds up here, and we see if our exclusivity is not rewarded, it will have consequences."


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[Dectilon]

...has one of those ever worked? 1877 signature you say? Yeah, that'll sure make 'em listen : P

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Digital petitions aren't worth the electrons they're printed on. And less than 2000 "signatures" isn't terribly convincing either, given the usual background level of Internet drama and platform bigotry it stirs.

Chalk me up as a big "whatever"; as a 360 owner I guess I'm not a neutral bystander, but I frankly think that the choice of platform for Crytek games lies with Crytek. If they can accomodate their PC fans, so much the better, but in the end it's Crytek's decision.

-- Steve

 

[sirdanrhodes]

Nothing like being united as gamers eh?

 

[FistsOfTinsel]

Almost 2000 sigs, you say? Well, given that the Crysis games probably cost in the $20 million dollar range to develop, that means if those signers are willing to cough up $10,000 per copy, Crytek is golden.

 

[Xanadu84]

Just out of curiosity, can consoles run Crysis on decent settings? Or would some of the graphics be compromised in a jump.

I'm a PC enthusiast, and hope that PC exclusives continue and thrive. I find PC games to have more depth then their console counterpart. A Petition is pretty worthless, but that settles it for me, I'm going to buy Crysis now that I have a new computer.

 

[shMerker]

Why does anybody think Piracy was the reason that Crysis didn't sell well? Isn't it more likely that people decided it wasn't for them based on the universal message from the media that it wouldn't run on your computer? I didn't even bother checking the system requirements before deciding that it probably wasn't worth the trouble.

It seems to me that the message this petition would send is that there are people who are really passionate about Crysis, or PC gaming, or Crysis on PC. Passionate people will pay more for something. The result of that would be exclusives with higher prices to make up for their limited, but dedicated audience. That might be completely appropriate though, since someone who's willing to pay extra for a high end graphics card is probably willing to pay extra to be able to use it to it's fullest potential.

However, don't mistake my belief that that paragraph was reasonable for my thinking it could happen that way. It's much more likely that if they released Warhead with a higher than normal price tag that it would result in more complaining and petitions and the claim that they were abandoning the PC gaming audience even though it might be the only way to make the game financially justifiable.

I would love to be proven wrong on that last point.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Petitiononline is the worst thing to happen to the internet. OK not the WORST, but it's just there for people to vent - thinking they are making a difference. What it's really doing, is making people look stupid.

Remember that "Mothers against Maddox" petition? Maddox put a link on his site, and ended up making it the most popular petition on petition online.

Obviously, Maddox is still on the internet and ranting.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

But why? Why does it matter? Why the hell would you care what damn platform it expands to when you already can play it with the one it's on now?

 

[KSarty]

But why? Why does it matter? Why the hell would you care what damn platform it expands to when you already can play it with the one it's on now?

It won't be a problem if they do it right(make it for the pc first), and its Crytek so they will do it right. The problem comes from when developers do it the other way around, thats when you run into problems and there will always be an issue with controls. Rainbow Six Vegas is a good example of this. I played R6V first on my friends PS3 and it ran exceptionally well, so I decided to get it myself, but as it was an FPS, I got it for my PC. Now it was running on a PC that had played Crysis on all high settings with a good framerate, and the game was a disaster. Lighting/shadow effects were not only plagued with glitches, but they sapped performance terribly, and there were quite a lot of texture alignment problems. The other problem was the controls, whenever a mouse/keyboard rig gets ported to a controller, there is rarely a problem, the reverse is not true. Whether it be from laziness of the developer or some issue that we don't understand, controller FPS games ported to a mouse/keyboard always feel sluggish and unresponsive. I'm not really sure of the reason for this, but I have seen it on many occasions, Lost Planet suffered from this as well.

That being said, porting from PC to console is much easier and since Crytek is more experienced in PC games, that should ensure that PC gamers get the original build of the game, so there shouldn't be a problem.

EDIT: To whoever was asking if current consoles could play Crysis at its peak, I'm pretty sure the 360 and PS3 could play the dx9 versions at pretty high settings. Unfortunately neither console has a video card that supports dx10, which is the only way to run Crysis at its best visually.

 

[Unknower]

Can't let those console players touch the games of PC gamer master race!

EDIT: To whoever was asking if current consoles could play Crysis at its peak, I'm pretty sure the 360 and PS3 could play the dx9 versions at pretty high settings. Unfortunately neither console has a video card that supports dx10, which is the only way to run Crysis at its best visually.

Crysis Warhead will have former DX10-only features in DX9.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

Oh no, what a disaster! A game is not going to be released solely on your platform, now other people without the NASA supercomputers required to run this game have a chance to enjoy it as well. Those people shouldn't have fun!


In other words: this is nothing more than stupid fanboyism.

 

[KSarty]

Oh no, what a disaster! A game is not going to be released solely on your platform, now other people without the NASA supercomputers required to run this game have a chance to enjoy it as well. Those people shouldn't have fun!


In other words: this is nothing more than stupid fanboyism.

How does everyone still believe that you need a "NASA supercomputer" to run Crysis, that was all media hype. When I bought Crysis I had 2 year old hardware and I could run everything on high settings at 1920x1200 resolution.

 

[jezcentral]

Aardvark Soup, it's not that simple. PCs are historically capable of more than a console in the last few years of the console cycle. Two years ago, the best performance per buck would have been got from the (manufacturer subsidised) consoles. Now the performance of the PC is in the ascendant again, and the fear is that some games might have to be dumbed down to work on all the platforms. The clearest example of this is that both the XBox360 and PS3 can only handle DX9, whilst the PC is increasingly moving to DX10. Obviously not all games would suffer from this, but stuff like Spore and WOW cannot be replicated on the consoles. (I guess most PC gamers still have nightmares from Deus Ex 2: Invisible War. It wasn't at all a bad game on it's own merits, but as a sequel to the great Deus Ex, it suffered in comparison, with it's smaller areas and shorter playing time. It was a worse game for also having to run on the old XBox).

I'm all for games that are platform specific. You just have to look at the Wii's success to see that making games for just one platform can mean new ways to play. (And this year's bleeding edge PC technology is tomorrow's console graphics card/chip architecture, so it's good to have games that stretch the PC further).

 

[Skrapt]

Piracy caused bad sales for Crysis you say?

OK, lets run with that, of course we'd have to ignore the herculean specs required to play the game, the only slightly above average shooter experience, the generic and boring story, and a game released with many stability issues...

I'm not for platform exclusivity, however I do believe that piracy has simply become a scapegoat for companies releasing an unfinished game which they don't want to have to fix it.

 

[Jumplion]

Wait, so these people want Crytech to not possibly expand their game and get more money? I thought that was the point of all these exclusives running around becoming multiplatform, it's a better chance for money.

I couldn't give two shits if Crysis or Warhead or whatever came on a console, I would possibly consider buying it since I don't see a reason to upgrade my PC for one game (which is the equivalent to buying a console for one game) and other reasons that keep me from upgrading my PC and spending all my money on something else I would want.

It's ironic when you think about it, console gamers always whine about exclusives being on another console and yet we have a bunch of PC gamers complaining that one of their "precious" games will possibly go to another platform. It's Crytech's decision, they don't have much of a right to deman Crytech less money given to them when they could port it to a console and possibly make twice or thrice more money now.

 

[cainx10a]

Wasn't planning to buy it, as I am currently dishing money into upgrading my PC for now, but I guess, I'll make the effort after reading this news. There better be a Crysis 2 and Crysis 3, exclusive for PC.