Developers of UT3 and Crysis are unhappy with PC sales of their games

[BladeVenom]

but if two big name developers are lamenting poor sales on the PC for two huge games, the rest of the industry is going to look at that as a sign to not even bother with the platform anymore.

Learn to read. Crysis is doing fine. It beat US sales expectations and was number one in Germany. That doesn't sound so bad to me.

The rest of the industry sees that the two biggest money making franchises right now are World of Warcraft and the Sims 2. WoW is raking it in with over 9 million subcribers paying every month. The Sims 2 outsold anything on the 360, PS3, or Wii. Not only that they've put out 6 expansion packs and 7 stuff packs that are also making them lots of money. Nothing on any of the new consoles compare to either one of those games.

From Halo to Halo 3, Microsoft has lost over $7 billion dollars in the console market. The PS3 is also losing money big time. Last quarter Sony's game division lost over $800 million despite the continued success of the PS2 and PSP.

 

[Revenicus]

The rest of the industry sees that the two biggest money making franchises right now are World of Warcraft and the Sims 2. WoW is raking it in with over 9 million subcribers paying every month. The Sims 2 outsold anything on the 360, PS3, or Wii. Not only that they've put out 6 expansion packs and 7 stuff packs that are also making them lots of money. Nothing on any of the new consoles compare to either one of those games.

You're trying to make this argument in support of PC gaming, but it's actually an argument against it.

What do WOW and Sims 2 have in common? They'll run on the slowest of computers. The biggest money makers in PC gaming don't have cutting edge graphics, because most people can't afford the best PCs. This is why it's not looking good for cutting edge PC gaming.

As a developer, why invest the money and effort in a cutting edge PC game that won't sell a lot of copies, but would sell much more on a console? Much to my dismay this is why I think PC gaming is heading towards only having mmorpgs, RTS games, and games like Sims 2.

 

[Ritorix]

What do WOW and Sims 2 have in common? They'll run on the slowest of computers. The biggest money makers in PC gaming don't have cutting edge graphics, because most people can't afford the best PCs. This is why it's not looking good for cutting edge PC gaming.

This is a good point. By aiming low on hardware specs, those PC games copy the consoles' advantages. We are also at a time in the gaming cycle when the consoles are still new and shiny, hardware-wise. Cutting-edge games can run on them well and look good, while most PCs struggle to run them. A low-end PC from two years ago, still running in the average home, can run WoW and Sims but cant run Crysis.

A few years from now, the current consoles will still be around but both PC hardware and game requirements will have advanced at their typical pace. The cutting-edge will favor PCs, as has happened in past cycles. Cutting-edge is always a small market on the PC, its been that way since people were tweaking extra fps from their Voodoo 1's playing Quake.

 

[BladeVenom]

What do WOW and Sims 2 have in common? They'll run on the slowest of computers. The biggest money makers in PC gaming don't have cutting edge graphics, because most people can't afford the best PCs. This is why it's not looking good for cutting edge PC gaming.

When WoW came out, it wouldn't work in everyones PC. People who couldn't play it when it was released bought the game after they eventually got a new PC.

If Crysis can keep a strong online community then the sales for the game will continue as people upgrade their PC.

Expansion packs are another money maker that PC games have that console don't.

Looking at the top ten PC games at Amazon, only 3 are brand new games. The rest are older games or expansion packs for older games. PC games can make money long after they come out. That's not lost on publishers.

PC games don't cost as much to advertise. Midway spent nothing advertising UT3. Although in hindsight, that was probably too little. Microsoft spent tens of millions of dollars advertising Halo 3. Just their one TV add campaign costed $10 million.

 

[TerranUp16]

There's always the talk about hardware specs being a major issue with PC games, but the fact remains that there are more people who own PC's able to play Crysis than there are people who own 360's and PS3's combined (and I'm sure that figure includes many "360 owners" such as myself who had them explode/utterly break-down and who thus no longer use the pieces of crap; end result of that is the 360/PS3 owner number is undoubtedly bloated). Now, recall that you need at least a GeForce 6800 to even play Crysis- that basically means that of the remaining card/hardware choices, you had to, at some point, have consciously built your PC for gaming. So the question then becomes, why are all of these people with PC's that can definitely support PC gaming not buying games like Crysis as 360-ites are buying Halo 3?

To answer that, I think you have two things to consider- for UT3, its cross-platform nature is probably hurting its PC sales. The ability of the PS3 version to support the m/k, to output gfx that near the PC's quality, and to play mods make it a very appealing option for people who don't have a GeForce 8800 card or HD Radeon 2900XT/3850/3870. For Crysis... it's an amazing game for the first six levels, but it took a lot of heat for everything beyond that. I feel that your average PC gamer is more review-savvy and does more to evaluate games before purchasing them rather than just hopping on the bandwagon. Crysis's technical woes only further hurt it. Perhaps some are just waiting for the January patch- I dunno. But given the somewhat negative reception Crysis has received, 80,000+ copies in 15 days for a relatively new IP is by no means bad- especially when all anyone thinks about when thinking of Crysis is graphics that the average, and even a majority of high-end, rigs cannot hope to see anytime soon, and not on its amazing, free-form gameplay (for the first six missions).

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that right now, the PC can output better gfx than the consoles, but your average PC can't. Thus, for anything that is multi-console, your PC version sales will suffer. As more affordable graphics cards (such as the 8800GT and 3850) come into play, the average PC will once again be beyond the consoles and then I feel you will see PC game sales pick-up again.

 

[magoo]

If more people own PCs able to play Crysis, than own consoles; how do you explain sales for Halo in the millions???? Same for Assassin's Creed???

Crysis < 100,000, Halo 3 over 1 Million (includes pre-sales, of course)

There are just plain more consoles out there now.
PC games are much more enjoyable and beautiful graphically......but when some kid's Dad has to decide, 3000 on a gaming PC or 400 on an XBox 360.....I dont know, you do the math.

Console=put disk in and play,dedicated on-line community.
PC=search for new drivers,update GPU,tweak the settings......Look I hate consoles, but unfortunately they make more sense economically......even if you have to pay for an XBL subscription.

 

[oqvist]

games is very expensive on consoles so if you buy a lot of games it´s not really cheaper .
But anyway there is more computers out there however people buy 360s to play games.. Most computers never sees any games in action .

Also there isn´t much work to keep a PC going. For sure since you CAN tweak it to get the most out of a system people tend to do it but it´s a free choice.

As for multiplayer should never been mentioned as a plus for consoles... Just about always less players online, you have to pay for it and it´s awkward having people chatting all the time since there is no keyboard... Easier to ignore text then chat and no existing lobbies due to lack of mouse/keyboard. It´s a pain in the ass to set up races in forza 2 or PGR and having to wait for people even if you don´t know if the admin guy is there just stupid...

In say the PC sims you can just go out and drive in practise sessions, chat with keyboard, much more cars on track makes much more sense.

 

[TerranUp16]

If more people own PCs able to play Crysis, than own consoles; how do you explain sales for Halo in the millions???? Same for Assassin's Creed???

Crysis < 100,000, Halo 3 over 1 Million (includes pre-sales, of course)

There are just plain more consoles out there now.
PC games are much more enjoyable and beautiful graphically......but when some kid's Dad has to decide, 3000 on a gaming PC or 400 on an XBox 360.....I dont know, you do the math.

Console=put disk in and play,dedicated on-line community.
PC=search for new drivers,update GPU,tweak the settings......Look I hate consoles, but unfortunately they make more sense economically......even if you have to pay for an XBL subscription.

(shrugs) It's a true statistic. As far as the cost of a gaming PC, if you're already getting a PC anyway, it's not much more- very comparable to the price of a console. However, I think that a lot of people, even those w/PC's capable of playing Crysis, don't look to their PC's as their primary gaming platform- they have a few games that they play a lot on the PC, but they just don't get a lot of games for it (for example, you can still find 10,000-20,000 players on Battlefield 2 at any given time; granted, nothing has really come along since to dethrone BF2, but it does relate the longer lifetime of PC games compared to console games- my friend has a 360 and plays on XBL all the time, and he constantly talks about how the XBL population shifts, very noticeably, from game to game; for example, when Halo 3 came out, its online was filled; however, when CoD 4 released, it became almost barren).

In terms of explaining Halo 3, that's a very easy one- marketing hype. Crysis, even though the second half of it is horrible, is still twice the game Halo 3 is- it just didn't get an eighth the marketing or hype Halo 3 did. Plus, there is the fact I mentioned previously- when the average person thinks of Crysis, they think of graphics, graphics that their system cannot possibly achieve and hence they feel no incentive to go out and get Crysis. Really, judging the PC market with only Crysis and UT3 is rather inaccurate- especially because both of these games were only released just over a month ago (for example, I just got UT3 a few days ago- I was in no rush).

Of course, the other big problem with these numbers is that they do not take digital distribution into account. I'm quite sure that if it took the likes of Steam into account, you would see very good sales figures for the Orange Box (I got my copy off of Steam), and potentially better numbers for CoD 4 and quite a few other games.

Fyi, for console multiplayer, XBL at least is predicated primarily on P2P hosting rather than dedicated servers, which for some games is a huge negative.

 

[Spare-Flair]

See the news link here : http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/12/17/crysis_ut3_sales_disappoint_developers/1

Crysis sold 86K copies in November, and UT3 sold 34K.


My own take on this is that everyone bought COD4/Orange Box instead! I dont know how many units COD4 sold on the PC, but in Nov, in the US alone, they sold 1.57M on the 360 and 444K on the PS3. Those numbers make the PC versions of Crysis and UT3 look pathetic. Just bear in mind that the consoles ALSO had a good lineup of games to choose from as well, yet still sold by the bucket load for some games.

Releasing games only on the PC is no longer economically viable when compared to cross platform sales. The news link talks about people struggling with hardware requirements.. which Im sure contributed as well.. but I dont think its the sole reason.

UT3 lost me as a customer as soon as Assault - the only redeeming feature of the UT franchise was removed. I have a nagging feeling that the PC gaming industry is only going further and further down the drain.

The other problem with the practice of focusing high-tech titles on the PC is that many gamers won't want to play on lesser settings, it feels denigrating, like a 3rd-class citizen who has to upgrade his computer to get all the eye-candy. People on consoles have an equal platform. Therefore, that gamer still wants those titles but ends up buying it a year later when it's on heavy discount and when that gamer finally has the hardware capable of keeping pace. I wasn't able to have a smooth and satisfying game of Oblivion until the 8800GTs came out, almost 3 years after the actual game.

 

[Frosteh]

Oh of course, it's a simple case of you get what you pay for, you can build a low spec PC but you'll end up with worse graphics and choppy gameplay. Expensive PC's are just that, expensive, you can blow LOADS of money on a decent PC, and I freqently do!

As always I'd like to point out that consoles being cheaper isn't strictly true, it is in some cases, but consoles make far more money on games than the hardware itself, and as such the markup in games adds up to a lot. For games that have just been released the price between console games and PC games can be close to 2x as much (in the UK)

 

[TerranUp16]

In the US the mark-up is only $10 ($60 vs. $50), but that basically means that on the PC, buy five games and get one free- or just put those $10 you save on each game towards an upgrade. On some games, the difference is a little more substantial, but those games are generally pure ports- that is, the PC version may as well be a console version w/a mouse (Stranglehold). Anyway, I've bought ~8 game in the past few months, so that's a savings for me of roughly $80 just in one part of a year. Consider a console's ~4-5 year lifespan and you're talking about accruing enough in savings to purchase a high-end gpu for some people.

 

[Big D.]

If more people own PCs able to play Crysis, than own consoles; how do you explain sales for Halo in the millions???? Same for Assassin's Creed???

Crysis < 100,000, Halo 3 over 1 Million (includes pre-sales, of course)

Halo 3 > 20 MILLION DOLLARS IN ADVERTISING
/argument

No PC game came anywhere close to that. In fact, some big PC games got ZERO dollars in advertsing...it's mostly word of mouth and reviews, previews on websites. If you consider the fact that Microsoft spent 20 million on ads and made $160 million back, that's 8 times as much money as they spent on ads. UT3 made approximately $3.3 million (~60k * $50-60) just going by the US numbers (no online, diff. countries, etc.) and they spent $0 on ads. The numbers are much more impressive if you ask me.

Any way you slice it, more advertising = more sales, regardless of the quality of the game. Just look at Area 51 which got shit reviews and sold way more than other big games which have around a 9/10 rating. Also think of all the bad movies you've seen. All movies which get trailers on TV make millions easily, even if some are just terrible. Same with all products.

Also, I'd just like to say that there are more PS3s and/or XBox 360s in North America than high-end PCs simply because games like GoW sold 4 million copies...which means at least 4 million people have an Xbox 360. Seeing as the top 1-2% of gamers have high-end hardware probably means that there are way more people with consoles than real PC gamers. Then again, Valve's latest hardware study showed that the most popular series of video cards is the 8800. (though a low percentage of people have one)

 

[TerranUp16]

There are ~10 million 360's and ~4 million PS3's- I think. However, that is compared to pretty much every relatively high-end card between the 6800GT and 8800 Ultra on the GeForce side of things for Crysis. That's roughly a 3.5 year span- granted, plenty of people such as myself upgraded from a 6800 Ultra to an 8800GTS, but it only counts me once. The introduction of more affordable cards such as the HD 3850/3870 and GeForce 8800GT will only serve to improve those PC numbers (and, as I recall, it's rather hard to find an 8800GT atm, no? Much harder to find that than a 360- ofc, the supply of 8800GT's is vastly smaller than the supply of 360's). But it really comes down to advertising- and the fact that barring WoW PC players do not seem as inclined to partake in "trends" such as Halo 3. Thus, you're not going to see the kind of sales for a single game on the PC as you do for the 360 (at least 50% of 360 owners have Halo 3, especially when you factor in how many supposed 360 owners do not use their 360 b/c it is broken- which is a significant amount). Ofc, the advertising for such really just isn't there for the PC anyway. But the point is that it's impossible to compare the sales of Halo 3 to the sales of Crysis.

 

[bmango]

There's always the talk about hardware specs being a major issue with PC games, but the fact remains that there are more people who own PC's able to play Crysis than there are people who own 360's and PS3's combined.

I am not sure I buy that. Do we know how many systems there are that have the minimum recommended requirements?

 

[TerranUp16]

Can't find the news bits now b/c most places archive them after a few weeks, but I know that Crytek or EA did extensive polling to figure out what kind of potential audience they had for Crysis and were surprised to find that they had a larger potential audience for Crysis than the potential audience for any PS3/360 game given that they found more people owned PC's able to meet Crysis's minimum reqs than they found people who owned 360's/PS3's combined. I'm not sure this is true in North America, but I could certainly see it being true worldwide (and remember that Crytek is based in Germany, Ukraine, and Turkey, so they are not really inclined to focus only on North America).

 

[Moofasa~]

(and remember that Crytek is based in Germany, Ukraine, and Turkey, so they are not really inclined to focus only on North America).

Like it or not, the North American market makes or breaks games.

 

[TerranUp16]

It makes or breaks console games, but I don't think that's quite as true with PC titles- and that's partly because a majority of console gamers are concentrated in the US which isn't true for PC gamers. However, I do think that the NA market makes more of a difference in the short-run right after a game's release.

 

[finalgt]

Crysis should not even have been released yet. It should have come out in a year or two when people can actually take a commercially available GPU, put it in their system, and run the game at remotely decent framerates at remotely decent resolutions, without having to search all over for custom configurations or tweaks or hacks or whatever the hell people do to get their framerates in this game above 15FPS. I don't want to get into a discussion about how "good" Crysis is, because that's relative and only opinion, but the people who try telling me that getting 35FPS in a game only after spending $1800 on 3 8800 Ultras and getting the game running in Tri-SLI is acceptable can stop talking before they start.

 

[aznpxdd]

Why are people bitching about Crysis' performance all the time? A 8800GT can run Crysis on high @ 1280x1024 and get 30+ FPS. If you want to run it at higher resolutions obviously the performance will suffer. A 9800 Pro didn't run Far Cry or Doom 3 smoothly at higher resolutions either, and I don't remember people making a big deal about it.

 

[BladeVenom]

If more people own PCs able to play Crysis, than own consoles; how do you explain sales for Halo in the millions???? Same for Assassin's Creed???

Crysis < 100,000, Halo 3 over 1 Million (includes pre-sales, of course)

There are just plain more consoles out there now.
PC games are much more enjoyable and beautiful graphically......but when some kid's Dad has to decide, 3000 on a gaming PC or 400 on an XBox 360.....I dont know, you do the math.

It's pretty obvious you don't know. I guess math is tough.

You don't need to spend $3000 on a gaming computer. I'd have a decent computer around even if I didn't play games. So gaming only costs me the price of a good graphics card, usually $200 to $300. If your a kid, then it should be easier to convince your parents you need a computer for school than it would be to convince them you need a PS3.

But even if you don't have a PC, you can put together a decent one for not much more than a console. I just priced a basic gaming PC for a friend. Everything at Newegg, except the video card from Best Buy.

2x1GB DDR2 800 $35.99
320GB HD $74.99
Radeon 3850 256mb $143.99 (Best Buy)
E2160 1.8 Ghz $79.99
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L MB $96.99
20X DVD Burner $25.99
A.C. Freezer 7 Pro $21.99
Antec NSK4480B w/380w ps $69.99

Total: $549.92

Notice, it's a lot less than $3,000, and almost as cheap as a console. It's also a lot better and more useful than a console. If you shop around and use rebates you could get something even cheaper.

As for game sales, The Sims 2 and WoW have both easily outsold any Halo game. Starcraft 2 will easily outsell Halo, and Spore might also. It won't happen at day one since PC games don't get as much advertisement, and PC gamers are more mature and patient. But both those games will eventually sell millions.

 

[Frosteh]

Crysis should not even have been released yet. It should have come out in a year or two when people can actually take a commercially available GPU, put it in their system, and run the game at remotely decent framerates at remotely decent resolutions, without having to search all over for custom configurations or tweaks or hacks or whatever the hell people do to get their framerates in this game above 15FPS. I don't want to get into a discussion about how "good" Crysis is, because that's relative and only opinion, but the people who try telling me that getting 35FPS in a game only after spending $1800 on 3 8800 Ultras and getting the game running in Tri-SLI is acceptable can stop talking before they start.

Dislike this argument, there's always someone somewhere who has to turn down video settings in a game to make it playable, thats no reason to not allow higher settings for future GPU's which can handle it.

To be quite honest you don't need to search around for tweaks and configs you can simply go in game and set the master quality drop down to be lower and run with that. Most of the "tweaks" don't give you better frame rates for free, they simply eliminate more of the subtle effects which take lots of rendering power with little visial difference.

 

[xsoulbrothax]

Like it or not, the North American market makes or breaks games.

It doesn't for PC games. I thought it was pretty much common knowledge, but apparently not... someone sort of mentioned this on the bottom of the 7th page. But the US is pretty much a console market when it comes to buying games at full retail in places like Wal-Mart or GameStop.

NPD, the source of most of the sales figures, counts primarily large B&M stores/chains in the US (maybe North America as a whole). Sales made via online stores like GoGamer aren't counted, though I think they count Amazon now. Sales made by digital distribution like Valve aren't counted. EA expected 60,000 sales of Crysis in the same period it got this 80,000 numbers. This means that EA went in and bankrolled however much advertising and funding, HOPING that the game would sell 60,000 copies via those retail channels in that time frame. Crytek and EA both aren't disappointed with the sales, and never said anything like that - that's people like us just tossing words into their mouths.

As a sort of example, IIRC The Witcher never even made it onto NPD sales charts (and if UT3 is on there, that's less than 25k for Witcher), but managed to clear a million sales overall in weeks. A fair amount of us bought the game, didn't we? C&C3 on PC sold something like 250k total via NPD numbers, but did 2+ million overall.

There's a whole lot of PC game sales going on that aren't really being tracked properly via the channels we have the ability to hear about - I think Crytek/EA expecting 60,000 copies sold at launch via NPD but still pouring all kinds of money into the game are a pretty blatant indicator of that.

 

[oqvist]

consoles=asia, north america... North america mostly stupid sport games except for HALO of course lol

pc=europe... Consoles have a hard time getting a strong foot hold here and there is few that actually try. Nintendo don´t want this market at all it seems. MS is making some efforts while Sony is not as ignorant as Nintendo but still don´t really care about europe much.

Otherwise Asia is the most important market for both Sony and Nintendo

 

[Kreator]

Why are people bitching about Crysis' performance all the time? A 8800GT can run Crysis on high @ 1280x1024 and get 30+ FPS. If you want to run it at higher resolutions obviously the performance will suffer. A 9800 Pro didn't run Far Cry or Doom 3 smoothly at higher resolutions either, and I don't remember people making a big deal about it.

oh my gosh, 1280x1024? jesus thats like... totally cutting edge technology.

sarcasm aside, i liked crysis for a few things it offered, and dont like it for some things i thought it would offer me. i'm not at all talking about graphics either.

graphics are always going to get better, games will always "push" hardware. if they didn't, the same people complaining that their 4000+ rig can't run the game will complain that their 4000+ rig isint "being tested" (pushed, whatever).

come on, open your eyes. nothing is ever perfect, nothing runs "as intended" and nothing will ever truly satisfy you with the type of attitude 90% of you are displaying here.


what did i like about crysis? i think its kinda cool to play as someone who can be super strong, fast, shielded, whatever. the idea of playing as a "super soldier" appeals to me. some people bought it strictly because they wanted to see cool graphics. of course your not going to like the game if thats why you bought it! buy something that catches your interest instead of something that catches other peoples interest.


that being said, i run it FAIRLY decently on my rig below although i now play on a 42'' westy instead of the 37 listed (same resolution though).

 

[Wrench00]

consoles=asia, north america... North america mostly stupid sport games except for HALO of course lol

pc=europe... Consoles have a hard time getting a strong foot hold here and there is few that actually try. Nintendo don´t want this market at all it seems. MS is making some efforts while Sony is not as ignorant as Nintendo but still don´t really care about europe much.

Otherwise Asia is the most important market for both Sony and Nintendo

Consoles are not Asia.. I live in Asia.. If you mean Asia = Japan then yes but I have been to Thailand, South Korea, China, Singapore, Vietnam, and all these places are PC friendly.. Asia !=Japan

Some one previously posted that North American makes or breaks games. Its very true. But the American market is really made up of many simpletons that constantly buy the same games over and over. North Americans degredation of culture, and values usually results in droves of people buying shity games just because they have a large amount of disposable income.

 

[oqvist]

Well I am looking at money and overall market... Japan totally drowns pretty much everything else in asia even if China is coming strong. Especially considering how wide spread piracy is in thailand, india etc where people apart from in europe, japan, US really can´t afford buying video games and not just pretending they cant.

As for NA make and break don´t want it to be true I mean look how badly the 360 does in Japan !=Asia lol.

For sure HALO titles make ridiculous profits while being so incredibly average however there is not many titles that makes that kind of profits. There is games like SMG, Bioshock, Assassins Creed that makes tons of money as well so no america definiatly doesn´t make or break games in general even though games like Crysis really should have sold better you think kind of weird what happened to that title. But there is always some title that drown in the holiday season each year.

Most game developers simply want to do as good games they can so we will always get quality titles like the Darkness mixed with the average stuff but with high production values lol. Valve, Blizzard and several others are to big to be totally controlled by publishers. There is always new game houses that gets their hit and thus their independence

 

[TerranUp16]

Adding to xsoulbrathax's post, I also doubt that the NPD counts EA's download service, and I know there were plenty of people pre-dling Crysis via that. In short, I think that we are starting to see a major shift towards download services on the PC (also, does the NPD count NewEgg? Does it count games that come bundled w/GPU's? I know that Crysis is bundled w/eVGA 8800GTS's- I got one of the last few I think that bundled ET: QW instead since I already bought Crysis- and I got UT3 in a bundle deal that included my sound card, a free headset, and UT3) and perhaps online retailers as well which may not be counted.

In terms of Americans... the average American is just, unfortunately, just very susceptible to advertisement. However, I do hand-out some praise for the excellent acceptance of the Wii.

In terms of Indians and illegal downloading- I have an Indian friend, and he tries to buy games legally. However, many popular titles are not sold in India or are sold at ridiculously excessive premiums that they cannot possibly hope to afford. The game industry is truly its own monster there.

In terms of Crysis and hardware... Complaints that Crysis is not well optimized are quite valid, as are complaints that Crysis does not maintain the same performance throughout. I have no problem with a game demanding more than my system can handle as long as I can attain stable settings that remain such throughout my experience. Crysis does not supply this. The whole second half of the game performs horridly and is not consistent from a performance standpoint with the previous half (I literally could not beat the ridiculously easy end boss at the settings I had been playing at because the game went from 25fps to 12fps, and I had to drop the settings and resolution down- and then turn them back up for the ending cinematic, lol). Hopefully the January patch will take care of this problem or at least improve overall performance enough to make its impact not matter as much (and, seriously, who really intends to play through the second half of the game again? Maybe if you can run it on Very High at >25fps all the way through just for the graphical experience, but that's about it really). However, as far as Crysis's High and Very High settings being tough for modern hardware to achieve- I actually very much so embrace that. Games should scale well into the future. As it stands now, Call of Duty 4 will probably look like total crap in a couple of years while Crysis will still look respectable, and both will be just as playable at their highest settings.

 

[oqvist]

actually COD 4 looks really bad and consolish after playing crysis already on a high spec machine... Though if I hadn´t played Crysis just before COD 4 I would probably think it had amazing graphics lol

 

[RAMMAN]

From what ive seen people post here that is not true. Either way, from my point of view its a $50 gamble im not gonna take.

i guarantee that crysis at 1280x1024 no AA everything high on your system will be not only be playable, but smooth also.you know why? because my system has the same vcard as yours and a slightly slower processor and i have some settings on very high.

 

[TerranUp16]

actually COD 4 looks really bad and consolish after playing crysis already on a high spec machine... Though if I hadn´t played Crysis just before COD 4 I would probably think it had amazing graphics lol

Totally agree- even Crysis just on High, not even Very High, has that effect. I actually played the CoD 4 demo before I played the Crysis demo, but the demo level- Bog- is so dark that the stretched textures were not as visible (and, of course, it was a demo- with settings like the model detail only able to scale up to normal, I had thought they may have been holding back). Alas, when I finally got the full game, I found no better graphics, and actually realized they were worse (because they were more visible)- the stretching on some CoD 4 textures is just flat-out painful. Imo, Crysis and UT3 are easily the best-looking games of the year- I'd even vote GoW ahead of CoD 4. But I am nevertheless perplexed- modern, high-end, PC gpu's have anywhere from 512mb-768mb of graphical memory. Being a developer myself, I know (or assume) that the textures used in the final game were actually created at much higher resolutions and just scaled down (unless we just do things differently- more smartly). Hence, it should have been no problem (disk space is a bit of a problem, but Crysis managed to put together what it did while only using a total of 6.3GB) to grant the PC version higher-resolution textures than its console counterparts. I guess my other problem w/CoD 4's gfx is that many of the textures are just handled poorly and stand out in a rather glaring fashion. Ofc, it doesn't mean I like CoD 4 any less (ok, maybe a little less), but it is rather disappointing.

 

[aznpxdd]

oh my gosh, 1280x1024? jesus thats like... totally cutting edge technology.

sarcasm aside, i liked crysis for a few things it offered, and dont like it for some things i thought it would offer me. i'm not at all talking about graphics either.

I was just pointing out that the best card out at the time of Far Cry and Doom 3's release (9800 Pro) wasn't able to run them smoothly at higher resolutions than 1280x1024. It wasn't until the 6 and x8xx series that you can even get playable framerates in Doom 3 on Ultra settings.

 

[Silus]

Guess I'm back to this thread...

Keep in mind that most people don't constantly upgrade their cards. They upgrade when they get their new PC every few years. So yes, as people upgrade their systems, and buy their new x1950, or 8600GT/GTS (or 8800GT if they leave extra cookies out for Santa) more people will be able to play Crysis.

I'm just going to answer this, because you still don't get it...
People DON'T NEED to upgrade all the time. A system like mine, which is over 2 years old, handles the game. It's not the smoothest experience ever, but it runs fine. So what exactly is the problem ? People can' take the performance hit, in what kind of system exactly ? A Pentium 2, with a Geforce 2 MX ? Give me a break
People with GeForce 6800s can play the game. Obviously not with all the bells and whistles, but they can run them game. And then there's also the fact that as new hardware comes out, the game will perform better. Stop complaining / criticize the game on a non-issue.

I can accept that. All of that. And I have said as much before. That's what gets me. You acknowledge there's a performance hit, but you can't seem to understand that the performance hit is not something that many people can take on their current hardware. Right now. Not a year from now. Not 6 months from now. We're not talking about which engine is more powerful. We're talking about why Crysis, as of now, hasn't sold 100K copies.

Is 100k your number ? Would really like to see the official numbers on how many copies did they expect to sell, in 15 days...86k in 15 days, for a PC exclusive is pretty impressive.
As for the Orange Box PC numbers, why would I need to find them ? So you're the one to say that the Orange Box sold buck loads more than Crysis, with ZERO proof on the PC front and I am the one that needs to get it ? I can only laugh on that one...

 

[Silus]

actually COD 4 looks really bad and consolish after playing crysis already on a high spec machine... Though if I hadn´t played Crysis just before COD 4 I would probably think it had amazing graphics lol

Exactly. People compare CoD4 and Crysis on performance alone. CoD4 graphics look good, when you're far from the objects you're seeing. You get close and it's either blur hell or extremely simple textures (for example the trees trunks), so of course CoD4 performs better. it doesn't provide the near photo-realistic graphics that Crysis does. In Crysis you can interact with almost everything. Physics calculations are being done in the background, for almost anything in plain sight. Sure, that comes with the dreaded "performance hit" that many are so scared of, but that's the price to pay for tech breakthrough. Don't like it ? Then go back to 2004-2005 and set the game to medium-low settings and the game will run smooth.

I never saw so many complaints on the performance of a new game. Oblivion came out and no one could max it. In fact, they could barely set it to medium settings. Only when the 8800s came out, was it possible to max it. And even then, only with a new 8800 GTX, for $650. And Oblivion didn't even bring the graphics fidelity that Crysis does...

 

[Silus]

The whole "I'm not going to buy a game because I can't max out the graphics" is quite frankly retarded, the Crytek engine is really well optimised and displays some really outstanding graphical scenes with a high graphical fidelity, the only reason most people cannot run this game at max settings is because it's been built future proof so that the engine is capable of not only powering todays games but the next generation games as well. When money is involved you build things to last, it just makes financial sense.

That's it. I don't want to call anyone retarded, but that's it. The "performance hit" some people talk about, means that the people complaining, need to lower a few settings, in order for the game to be playable, which is not a compromise they are willing to make...This was said countless times in this thread.
It's either "I run this game maxed @ 1920x1200, which is my monitor's native res" or "the game sucks and CoD4 / Orange Box games are better". It makes no sense and I'm in awe how people keep saying this. I'm also repeating myself, since I've said this very same thing before...

For the complainers, I'll just say "Welcome to evolving technology! It's because of games like Crysis, that we get more powerful hardware, each generation!"
If the industry thought like you did, GeForce 256 would still be groundbreaking graphics processing hardware...

 

[TerranUp16]

Just kinda fyi, my friend who helped me build my current rig (~3 years ago- also helped w/all my upgrades until this last one) moved and his gfx card got screwed- end result is that he is currently using my old 6800 Ultra that I gave to him when I replaced it w/my first 8800GTS 640mb. He's able to run Crysis at 1024x768 w/Medium settings at a playable framerate- and the 6800's are supposed to be the min reqs (granted, it's a 6800 Ultra, but the mere fact it can get all the settings to medium is fairly impressive and speaks well for Crysis's performance at those lower settings).

 

[Frosteh]

That's it. I don't want to call anyone retarded, but that's it. The "performance hit" some people talk about, means that the people complaining, need to lower a few settings, in order for the game to be playable, which is not a compromise they are willing to make...This was said countless times in this thread.
It's either "I run this game maxed @ 1920x1200, which is my monitor's native res" or "the game sucks and CoD4 / Orange Box games are better". It makes no sense and I'm in awe how people keep saying this. I'm also repeating myself, since I've said this very same thing before...

For the complainers, I'll just say "Welcome to evolving technology! It's because of games like Crysis, that we get more powerful hardware, each generation!"
If the industry thought like you did, GeForce 256 would still be groundbreaking graphics processing hardware...

Well said.

To justify better hardware we need software to push the limits of current hardware, and to justify coding games ahead of the time we need ensure the hardware is there to back it up, this is what drives the industry forward and keeps other platforms like consoles looking like last years garbage, As such there is always going to be grey areas where hardware exceeds software and software exceeds hardware, it's a necessity.

But I must say it's nice to go back to games a year or so after their release and play them "maxed out", oblivion was a good example, no one was playing this game in max settings on release but after the 8800GTX people were in awe of how good it looked at high res with the settings cranked. I hope early next year we can revisit Crysis and experience the same thing and stand back in awe of just how good it looks (actually I've tried Crysis in 2560x1600 4xAA and all very high in DX10, in the dmeo when you first got to daylight and looked over the cliff at the sunrise and it was stunning, much less than 1FPS but still it looks amazing.)

 

[Vriess]

I didn't buy crysis because it didn't run very well on my comp. And it's pretty new. I feel like my next computer might run it well.

 

[Big D.]

Just to go back to the sales numbers. I really do think we should get real numbers from online retailers also.

All the games I've personally bought over the past couple of years have been bought online. I bought a pack with Day of Defeat Source, CSS and HL2 DM from STEAM, I bought The Orange Box off STEAM too, I got ETQW with my video card and I bought SupCom from NCIX with my computer parts. Other people I know only bought games online too. It's much more convenient.

I guarantee you lots of people buy games online, especially those who know a lot about games and computers. I don't want to change DVDs and have douzins of boxes lying around...I just wanna double-click an icon and play the damn game, so STEAM's a great option for me, especially since all these big publishers started putting their games on there. Now you can buy most of the big games of the past 5+ years online and I see no advantage to buying them from a store. (Except if you really love boxes and changing DVDs often)

I would love to see some global sales numbers for all major games including online purchases. I guarantee you Crysis and UT3 did just fine.

And I'd personally love to know how many people bought TF2. For a game to have thousands of people online at the same time, you sometimes need to have sold millions of copies. (look at CS) Other games sell over a million and have like 4 people online (Prey and others), so it's really hard to guess how much a popular online game sold.

 

[-O-rigin]

Crysis is a "frustrating enigma" for me.

I've not written anything about it as of yet, so I'll just drop it all here. I know some will agree/understand, and some wont, but here's my take on the game as a whole.

While it can be beautiful to look at, and there are some aspects of the gameplay that are enjoyable, the gameplay just isn't there as a whole. I don't personally feel it to be one of those games really worth going back to, even when new hardware is released that can run it on even higher settings.

With all of that "open space" in Crysis, since it really does nothing to add to the gameplay (meaning the amount of "open space" they actually implemented) and, ironically, ends up feeling just like your normal corridor shooter. While you can use some of that space to circumvent and handle objectives and enemies in different ways, because it's not heavily objective-based, there's almost no reason to do so, despite how beautiful it might look.

In a corridor shooter, all you see (generally) are various hallways and rooms. In Crysis, all you see (generally) is jungle. Sure, there's beautiful water and the beautiful (and extremely annoying) alien ship, then the battleship at the end. So there's a little more variety than perhaps your average FPS, but there's not enough lasting impact or aesthetic to Crysis to make it worth going through more than a few times, at most.

Of course, all games have a limit as to their environments so I'm not "complaining" about any shooter, corridor or not, but just stating that there's really not much of a difference in the end, because there's not quite as much variety as some proclaim or use for all of that "open space" that's in the game.

Even with the various methods that can be used with the nanosuit mixed with the environment, there's only so many times you can go back and attack the KPA in only so many ways, before it just becomes an exercise in boredom.

Keep in mind, that I was extremely psyched about Crysis, and there are some aspects to the game that are indeed revolutionary. For example, the physics of the fluidity of the alien machine's tentacles. I've seen CGI in films that doesn't look that fluid. Some of the detail in the visuals, though there's a lack of continuity there, as not all similar surfaces look equally as good to one another. But as a whole, things look stunning. Some of the "open-ended" environment style that allows you to attack different scenarios in different ways, mixed with the abilities of the nanosuit.

But despite all of this, and despite being one of those people who played the demo almost more than certain other full-length FPS titles before Crysis was released, after twice through and going back to certain particularly good parts of certain levels, the overall attraction of Crysis wanes considerably. I've gone back to certain parts just to specifically deal with things in different ways, and it was enjoyable. But even with all of it's supposed "open-ended" style of the environment and the nanosuit, there are only so many ways you can rely on that before you realize that there's no real memorability to the game.

As good as it looks now, and as much of a "graphics whore" as I can be at times, the gameplay still has to be there, and I don't see myself reinstalling it in the future just to get the little "extras" in terms of visuals that might be able to be had at a playable rate.

Crysis is a good FPS, but far from being extremely memorable, because the overall production values as a whole and lack of lasting impact and aesthetic hurt it's replay value.

I personally have gone through, completely, HL2 about four-thousand times. Even my wife became addicted to it, heh. The overall fluidity, feel and very strong aesthetic to the game is just outstanding. I was hoping Crysis would offer the same, but I'm sure there are others who understand what I'm getting at here, and who are themselves thinking of all the games they've played and maybe are still playing over and over again. As opposed to Crysis, which doesn't offer a hell of a lot of reason to go back to it after the initial appreciation of some of the things it has to offer, some of the time.

It needed a stronger aesthetic to the gameplay and in general, and perhaps some more use for all that beautiful open space, and it would have been perfect.

 

[TheBluePill]

Consoles are not Asia.. I live in Asia.. If you mean Asia = Japan then yes but I have been to Thailand, South Korea, China, Singapore, Vietnam, and all these places are PC friendly.. Asia !=Japan

Some one previously posted that North American makes or breaks games. Its very true. But the American market is really made up of many simpletons that constantly buy the same games over and over. North Americans degredation of culture, and values usually results in droves of people buying shity games just because they have a large amount of disposable income.

That is absolutly the most horrific analysis I have ever seen. You should be ashamed of yourself.