Crytek Moving to Consoles

[Andy Chalk]

Crytek Moving to Consoles

Despite its history as a PC game studio, Crytek [http://www.crytek.com/]President Cevat Yerli has said his company will be moving to console development for its future releases.

In an interview with Croatian gaming site Crysis [http://www.pcplay.hr]. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable," he said. "I believe that's the core problem of PC gaming, piracy. To the degree PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform."

"Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more," he continued. "It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in the future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore."

However, Yerli added that the focus on consoles would not start with Crysis, which he confirmed could not be made to run on consoles in its current state. "Crysis as we have seen is impossible," he said. "Crysis would have to be largely changed to bring it to PlayStation 3 [http://www.xbox.com]. Crysis is designed to be PC exclusive. Our internal focus is not linked to bring Crysis to consoles."

He was also ambivalent about Crytek's support for Games for Windows Live [http://www.microsoft.com] service, despite the fact that Crysis was released as part of the Games for Windows initiative. He said the Games for Windows Live SDKs came too late for inclusion in Crysis, and added, "Whether we support it in the future will be a business decision though and nothing has been decided."

Crytek broke onto the PC gaming scene in 2004 with the hit FPS Far Cry [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Cry], which featured a highly advanced graphics engine, large, transition-free levels and comparatively open-ended gameplay. Crysis, released in November 2007, offers similar gameplay in a different setting, with numerous technological improvements including support for DirectX 10.

The full interview with Crytek's Cevat Yerli is available at pcplay.hr [http://www.pcplay.hr/modules.php?r=23].



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[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Ouch. That is seriously a major blow to PC elitists. Luckily, I <3 consoles, so I still win.

 

[Larinson]

Had Crysis been particularly good I might be concerned. I expect we shall now see 'consolised' FPSs from Crytek, which is a shame. As for the piracy argument, I think it would hold more weight if Crysis didn't require such ridiculous system requirements to play it. The only reason I bought it was because I got a new PC and wanted to give it a thorough run out. I expect Crysis will have reasonably good sales over this year as well. Really, it seems that they are using piracy as an excuse to jump on the console band wagon. I can see why they would want to develop over more platforms - after all, it should increase sales. It would be nice to see them come out and say that though!

 

[Junaid Alam]

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you.

Crytek's whining elicits little sympathy on this end. The arrogance with which they decided to craft the Crysis engine is breathtaking. Forget about playing it on consoles - it doesn't play well on most anything.

It was one debacle after another: it was touted as showcasing Nvidia's graphics cards, but didn't even support SLI until after a patch. It still scales poorly with two cards, offering 25 percent performance boost. The latter half of the game, with its ice and then alien and aircraft carrier levels, see an almost linear drop in performance compared to the jungle. Most of the supposed "DX10 only" features turned out to be DX9-capable, so the developers flat-out deceived people there. Even more amusing, there is a broad consensus that the game runs and feels slower and with more mouse lag on Windows Vista compared to XP.

Crytek just never learned. No one bought licensing rights for the Far Cry engine. And now no one's bought the rights to this one, which is horribly inefficient.

Then, to add insult to injury, they repeated Far Cry's main gameplay mistake: replacing an open-ended environment of human enemies with constricting linear levels filled with aliens.

There are obvious economic reasons developers are fleeing from the PC market but for Crytek to pretend it's all about piracy instead of their own numerous shortcomings is beyond disingenuous.

 

[Cousin_IT]

Yup I dont buy piracy as the main reason alot of big FPS' dont sell as well as their console counterparts. That said, I think with hardware & software technology racing ahead as it is, the console is becoming the better place for FPS' more & more. Id imagine when Crysis was released at least 1/2 its potential audience couldnt, or thought they couldnt, run it on their PCs due to technological holdbacks; certainly not play it at full spec which is the only real reason to get such glossy games.

But hey, maybe this is good. If more & more developers/publishers who have been sucked into the black hole of graphics over gameplay join the exodus from consoles, maybe PC games will be left with those who sacrifice top of the range graphics for making a game that justifies its pricetag.

 

[adamandkate]

yeah. this is really really amazing to be honest...

EVERY 360 owner can play EVERY 360 game. Only a fraction of pc owners can play crysis. And even less would want to. I own a ps3, 360, wii, ds, psp, and a top spec pc. However please expalain to me why would i want to play a game on my 20inch pc monitor on a computer chair... or a new 360/ps3 game on my 40odd inch tv sitting on the sofa.

My pc was £1500 about 2 weeks ago, and at times i get slowdown playing crysis. I consider my pc buying habbits to be more, well, obsessive then most. People cant afford these kinds of systems.

and more to the point, when did you last see a pc game advertised? the consoles have such a huge foothold at the moment. perhaps why it didnt sell like they wanted was because the consoles are that good at the moment.

/endmoan

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

I don't get it, you can pirate Console games too, but, I've already said too much.

Anyway, saw this coming, everyone and everything is turning "multi-plat" and as long as Crytek doesn't "consolize" any of it's games or "casualize", then I don't give much of a shit what platform they develop for, they've got "experienced PC dev. roots" so, I'm sure they won't have trouble with that.

Now Junaid Alam's post makes more sense as to why they would leave, I've always noticed that piracy is an "excuse" but never the ACTUAL problem, Crysis sold very well for a PC exclusive with high sys. req. (and it actually did play well contrary to popular belief, all you had to do was turn down post processing but for some reason everyone felt the need to make their computers cry for more because it's an 'e-masochist looking for a challenge) - so it's obviously Crytek's mistake and not the pirates fault this time, but, no one ever wants to "blame themselves" - it's not like they will stop making PC games anyway, so this doesn't really matter much to me, I just don't want them to gimp their great games because of consoles limitations.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Boo hoo. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

 

[Charley]

I think Crytek committed the cardinal sin with pc games if you want to discourage piracy - make a game worth paying for, not an overhyped tech demo. There are a lot of people who'll happily pay for a good game, despite pirating possibilities, but Crysis, frankly, was a painfully shallow, hammily-acted and too-average fps that was designed to appeal to people with flashy pc fetishes. It's no surprise really that the average customer wouldn't want to pay for it.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Crysis doesn't run on probably 90% of the PCs out there. Add to that this weird "look, most DX10 'features' work just fine in DX9" crap to a game that isn't much more than visually impressive and you get what you deserve. If Crytek seriously thought that Crysis would be a major blockbuster they're fooling themselves. Don't get me wrong: I like Crytek. They make technically very impressive games. But if you develop a game that only runs properly on pretty much high-end machines you should know that this game won't sell too good, especially if the low settings of that game, which would run on a "normal" PC, just look awful.
The only thing I don't like about Crytek going console: The technical impressiveness of their games will mostly be a thing of the past.

Aside from the technical point of view:
What's the fear about their games being consolised? What is in those games that could be simplified? They're shooters, nothing else. The only thing special about Crysis (the nanosuit) could be controlled just fine with a console controller. So, I'm not really afraid that their games might get simplified.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I think there needs to be some reasonable clarification between a demanding game and one that doesn't run on "most" systems. 90%? Come on. I ran the Crysis demo on a mid-range system with a 256-meg ATI X800 GTO2 and with most functions enabled at medium settings (although obviously not anything DX10) it ran perfectly well. And even at those reduced settings, it looked super-hot, better than just about anything else out there. If I had everything cranked up and maxed out it'd be a different story, but that's no different than, say, Doom 3 - which obviously had problems of its own, but criticism about excessively-demanding specs wasn't one of them.

The only "fear" about Crytek moving to console support I can see is just that it's indicative of the ongoing difficulties with PC gaming - rampant piracy, innumerable hardware configurations and perceived expense. I don't have a particular problem with it myself as long as the console support doesn't compromise PC development.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

See mew posts here
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6190150.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6190150#post_comment
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/13818.cfm
http://forums.theeca.com/showthread.php?t=4588

Before I start in the 360 is the easiest device to mod to run copies and it works day one no waiting a week for cracks,sure you go on live it gets baned but all things considered most if not all 360 games are made to run on "all" 360s.....

Lets give a quick run down of what I said, ah yes blame the magical one legged pirate strawman... for not waiting to spend money or time to port it for targeting a niche in a niche market for making a bland sandbox shooter with no replay value...sure it must be the one legged man, good use of starwman on the spacegoat pyre..my god the game sold well its not a block buster but then game companies are starting to get overly addicted to block buster sales if it dose not sale like a flagship title they ignore it blame a nonexistent missing appendage scape goat and move on to the next title ignoring the fact they have one to patch(glares at bioshock and every other multi console game on PC).

I so love the righteous indignation they are spewing on this one.... you can't sale to consumers that wont buy, you can't sale to consumers that can't run it but you CAN offset the question of when its coming to to the consoles and why was it not a block buster with "the pirates did it"....

Its never questionable business practices its always the 3rd wheel they ahve hidden away to scape goat on.

BTW check this out
PC game developer has radical message: ignore the pirates
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080320-pc-game-developer-has-radical-message-ignore-the-pirates.html%5B/quote%5D

Brad Wardell has some interesting things to say here check it out, this has strengthen my resolve and reasoning that downloading is such a small number world wide and that more than half of thos would not buy it new or would not buy it or would find a cheaper hobby the numbers just do not add up, now bootlegging(illicit physical distro) I can see the harm there ,but when it is free and thought like there are just to many variables, as we see with other titles its all about marketing/hype and market saturation.

In final they can make for consoles all they want, but if they make the same level of crap that everyone else makes who are they to blame when a bad game dose not sell?

Don't get me wrong with prices that halve every 3-5 months there is no need to download unless you bought a game you need a "clean" copy of(steam games for instance,steam is nothing more than bloated spyware IMO, one can say I'll the ticke for the ride but not ride the ride they want me to it has to be forgoing the wool wearing the black paint and tinfoil hat thats cook mew black sheeple brains), as a consumer I will fight for my fair share of rights but int he end buying is sheep if you know where to go amazon and ebay are good places to startI got Bioshock3 weeks after relase for30 and cryisis 2 or 3 months after release for about 25..
just picked up 2 copies of UT 3 12 collectors ed new 26$ for self 1 reg used title for 20$ for friend.

also managed to pic up Shadow hearts1-3 PS2 for 22 a pop,and I have bought whole games with case and manual in god shape and non crap fest title for 5-14$.

(mods please tell me if I crossed the line, I like this site even if I drool on it, I have been raging over this the past few days so i might have mew blinders on,thnx for putting up with mew =^^=)

 

[Vapus]

Lol ITs easier to Jack Crysis 2 For PS3 Than computer now anyways,,, The campus I attend is Proof of that .. LOL .. Its about the money.. Ya want more sales? then you HAVE TO multiport.. thats a fact that people will have to accept one way or the other.. It is sad tho to see Cevat and EA flat out lie about PC development mattering to them.. as it clearly does not.