Crytek Engine business manager Harald Seeley has confirmed
in an interview with Next-Gen that the recently announced
Crysis Warhead will remain a PC exclusive due to being so far along in development. All of Crytek’s future projects are still planned to be multiplatform, however, due to the developer’s problem with
high piracy rates.
“Of course
Warhead has been under development for quite some time, and we had no desire or intention to disappoint our loyal PC fans. So, after some careful consideration, we decided to continue our support for the PC
Crysis franchise with this release. But yes, all new franchises we develop in the future will be created with a cross platform strategy in mind.”
Seeing as Crytek is so concerned with piracy, it stands to reason that they might decide to go overboard with DRM, but thankfully Seeley reveals that this might not be the case.
“While we are certainly very concerned about piracy and copy protection, we are also concerned about the potential opposite problem, that of inconveniencing legitimate buyers with newer measures that interfere too greatly with their enjoyment of the product. So we are carefully considering all possible options here, however we are not yet at a stage where we have made a final decision.“
Hit the jump for more.
It’s good to see a developer realize that adding intrusive DRM really does nothing but tick off the Internet at large and make consumers that bought the game feel rightfully inconvenienced. Not to mentioned the hackers it spurns on who erroneously see their actions as some sort of righteous endeavor against “the man.”
Seeley goes on to say that these ports will include “something unique on each platform and will be carefully tuned to both the capabilities and strengths of that platform, as well as the intended audience.” Hopefully these “unique” additions are something a bit more creative than shoehorned SIXAXIS controls for PS3 versions and genuinely add something worthwhile to each version. Or would you even care about getting something minor like a suit of armor so long as the game itself is plenty fun?
Finally, Seeley mentions that the CryENGINE 2 has been made more scalable as a result of having to optimize for consoles, meaning it should run better on all levels of hardware. Good news for people that haven’t updated their systems recently.
Contest:
5:28 PM on 06.08.2008
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It's about the fact they can't overcharge for the game like they can on the consoles, not to mention tap into that market, which is of a tremendous size itself. Of course, they feel guilty, because games need to be technically worser (can't shoot for the stars) if you're doing it on hardware that was old the day it shipped to sales.
Piracy is a dumb scapegoat. Trying to use it as a legitimate reason makes you look like a clown.
However they spin it, at least they seem to have realised that releasing a game which was pretty much unplayable on the majority of machines out there isn't going to get them big sales. With any luck I'll be able to get more than an average of 20FPS (with an 8800 series card) on my rig in their future releases.
Also, maybe it makes them look like clowns to us, but their are plenty of idiots (even lurking around Dtoid) who are happy to take that as gospel.
If they're not lying about the engine running much better, and if they can set up multiplayer better(its fun to play, but the current system is very basic, needs more options) and give out some dedicated server software, then i would be very interested in buying this. Actually, if they put it on Steam, id be hard pressed not to, since then id get a fair price too.
Anyway, I heard that besides graphics this game didnt have that much going for it(I never played it personally). Did it suffer from overshooting system requirements, or releasing in a fps saturated market??
It also had amazing gameplay. The reason Crytek are releasing it on consoles are to get the attention they deserve.
The system requirements aren't that high really. It has been highly exagerated. You're not expected to be able to run the game on the absolute highest settings at 9999x9999 resolutions. My pc is 3 years old, it cost $1500 at the time, you can get the same thing now for around $700. I can run it on the highest settings at 1280x1024. Which is alot better than any console.
It is purely a myth that Crysis requires a god pc.
"But yes, all new franchises we develop in the future will be created with a cross platform strategy in mind."
taken directly from the answer you were citing...
Notice how he said FRANCHISES. That means that the planned Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 games will be PC exclusive as well.
Oh, and madninja, I believe you meant Stardock(Publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire) and Ironclad Games(Developer of Sins of a Solar Empire).
Fuck Crytek, honestly. They signify bad things about PC gaming, not good.
It ain't about piracy, it's about having a game that is too powerful to run on most computers
I feel I didnt even give the game a decent chance, even when my PC can run it and is not terrible with performance... actually to the standards of today and given what it is plays quite nicely. The problem is that most of the people are not pc gamers and also it feels like the video card capable of playing this game to the max is still a year away (since the only way to play it with good fps in max is with two cards).
I'm running a Q6600, 4Gbs of RAM and two SLIed 8800's; I can get a steady 25-30 FPS at very high... 15-20 in a heavy firefight... which is not acceptable IMO. That was a $2k computer 4-5 months ago...
Anyway, it was just another sandbox FPS except much less impressive. If there has been ANY story or decent multi-player, maybe it wouldn't have been pirated? Funny how Sins of a Solar Empire managed to top the PC sales charts without any DRM and plenty of torrents. Maybe it depends on the quality of the game?