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Crytek: PC Gaming is doomed, we only sold a million copies

RookRook Registered User regular
edited May 2008 in Games and Technology
Seems like Crytek is jumping on the multiplatform development train and announcing that Crysis was there last exclusive title.

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/04/29/no-more-pc-exclusives-says-crytek-ceo/

“We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis,” he said. “We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a [situation] that is not desirable.”

He added: “I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming: piracy… PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive any more.”


Although, honestly, I kinda wonder at the legitamacy of that statement.

So, is this another nail in the now steel coffin, or just another illustration of how redundent PC/360/PS3 are compared to each other.

Rook on
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Posts

  • harvestharvest By birthright, a stupendous badass.Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Wah wah wah waaaaaah.

    Why do pc devs gotta play the blame game? Didn't they read that Stardock guy's essay about not blaming piracy?

    EDIT: Multiplatform means we get even worse PC games because they have consoly controls and menus :( Not that I care about Crytek's games anyway, but if anything hurts the PC industry it's multiplatform games.

    harvest on
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  • j0hnz3rj0hnz3r Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    ...or how about you fuckers make a game that doesn't require me to rebuild my fucking system? hmmmmm?

    signed,
    people who don't have at least an extra $1000+ of expendable income

    j0hnz3r on
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  • bobmyknobbobmyknob 3DS Friend Code 4553-9974-2186 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Also, I don't think there are millions of computers able to play Crysis (OK, there probably are), but it'd be more fitting to look at a game like WoW or the Sims that are able to be played on a wider variety of computers.

    Also, it sold a MILLION COPIES! That's good even for consoles.

    bobmyknob on
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  • BasticleBasticle Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    What the hell are they complaining about, I've seen countless posts from people on this forum who live in Brazil or South-East Asia and console games there are almost all pirated.

    Basticle on
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  • DisruptorX2DisruptorX2 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    PC games are a niche audience and 1 million copies is impressive for a tech demo that most people can't even run.

    DisruptorX2 on
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  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    PC games are a niche audience and 1 million copies is impressive for a tech demo that most people can't even run.

    Change that to "non-casual PC games" (i.e. not the Sims or any of the online Java stuff) and I'm with you.

    The "hardcore" (for lack of a better word) PC market continues to shrink, and cracking a million with that is a damn impressive feat.

    Anyway, this is, what, the seventh PC developer to bitch about the platform and announce they're going multiplatform this year? Why aren't PC games in trouble, again?

    cloudeagle on
    Switch: 3947-4890-9293
  • RookRook Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Crysis has pretty low system requirements, it runs alright on my laptop and it's playable on my 4 year old PC

    Rook on
  • theantipoptheantipop Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    Why aren't PC games in trouble, again?

    Because good games keep getting released on the PC.

    theantipop on
  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    theantipop wrote: »
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    Why aren't PC games in trouble, again?

    Because good games keep getting released on the PC.

    True, but if more and more developers loudly bitch about the state of the platform and announce they're going multiplatform/non-PC, thus resulting in fewer good games on the PC, that's a problem.

    cloudeagle on
    Switch: 3947-4890-9293
  • j0hnz3rj0hnz3r Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    theantipop wrote: »
    cloudeagle wrote: »
    Why aren't PC games in trouble, again?

    Because good games keep getting released on the PC.

    True, but if more and more developers loudly bitch about the state of the platform and announce they're going multiplatform/non-PC, thus resulting in fewer good games on the PC, that's a problem.

    Leaving smarter companies like Blizzard, EA, and Stardock to reap the benefits?

    Good games sell. Period. It's not rocket science.

    Make your PC game
    1) Fun
    2) Accessible
    3) Run on a wide spectrum of hardware
    4) For a realistic audience.
    5) With a realistic budget.

    DING DING DING, your game will sell.

    The Crytek guys went out of their way to make a game that pushed the bleeding edge, which is a niche audience as it is. Considering the size of that audience, the fact that they sold a million is fucking stellar.

    j0hnz3r on
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  • FightTestFightTest Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Crysis may have had low system requirements, and it may have ran on lower-end systems, but the only publicity that game EVER got was about its crazy graphics and use of DX10. I have a fairly decent machine but it's still running XP and a last-gen DX9 card, so I never even considered buying Crysis.

    Regarding the piracy issue, wake the fuck up. Steam and MMOs don't have giant piracy issues, take a hint. Nobody with a computer capable of running a state of the art game these days doesn't have internet access. Force people to make an account and register their copy with you. Congrats, you just solved the vast majority of your piracy issues.

    FightTest on
    MOBA DOTA.
  • cloudeaglecloudeagle Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    I'll agree that Crytek (and, to an extent, many other PC devs) paint themselves into a corner by going after bleeding-edge visuals and alienating people who don't have a separate video card (upwards of 60 percent of PC owners, apparently) and those who don't want to mess with upgrades every other year. That's a bigger problem than piracy.

    cloudeagle on
    Switch: 3947-4890-9293
  • theantipoptheantipop Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    It's also a problem blown out or proportion by the propensity of power users to keep up with the Jones within their hobby. I ran on a Radeon x800xl which I bought for $150 3 years ago. The only reason I upgraded to an 8800gt was because I saw a good opportunity to snag a brand new card for $200 that was within 10% of the best available at the time and I imagine I'll be able to keep this thing around for another 3 years at least.

    Being that games are almost entirely GPU bound these days, nearly any stock PC that is capable of being upgraded with a PCIe card can being a monster gaming rig. Since everyone owns a PC, the "cost of being a PC gamer" is almost universally overstated. If you average the cost of a midrange video card every 3 years to that of a console bought at launch, I think you'll find the costs compare favorably.

    theantipop on
  • MechMantisMechMantis Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    FightTest wrote: »
    Crysis may have had low system requirements, and it may have ran on lower-end systems, but the only publicity that game EVER got was about its crazy graphics and use of DX10. I have a fairly decent machine but it's still running XP and a last-gen DX9 card, so I never even considered buying Crysis.

    Regarding the piracy issue, wake the fuck up. Steam and MMOs don't have giant piracy issues, take a hint. Nobody with a computer capable of running a state of the art game these days doesn't have internet access. Force people to make an account and register their copy with you. Congrats, you just solved the vast majority of your piracy issues.


    Ahahahahaha.

    All the special effects running in DX10 will work in DX9 with no noticeable (if any) quality drop, with an increase in performance.

    But yeah. They're talking out of their asses here.

    MechMantis on
  • widowsonwidowson Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Rook wrote: »
    Seems like Crytek is jumping on the multiplatform development train and announcing that Crysis was there last exclusive title.

    http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/04/29/no-more-pc-exclusives-says-crytek-ceo/

    “We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis,” he said. “We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a [situation] that is not desirable.”

    He added: “I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming: piracy… PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive any more.”


    Although, honestly, I kinda wonder at the legitamacy of that statement.

    So, is this another nail in the now steel coffin, or just another illustration of how redundent PC/360/PS3 are compared to each other.


    From a purely buisness standpoint, I don't see why a company should make something a PC exclusive when consoles do have a bigger userbase because a console is way cheaper than a good PC; some graphics cards cost about as much as a 360.

    Isn't that just robbing yourself of sales? Why not do both if you can; reach both markets? Is it that expensive and time-consuming to translate a game into both mediums?

    I can't believe Crytek's finance people didn't look at The Orange Box, Bioshock, and Call of Duty 4 and say "Wow, they sold an assload of copies, let's do a PC and console version for the 360 and PS3!"

    widowson on
    -I owe nothing to Women's Lib.

    Margaret Thatcher
  • slash000slash000 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Well I can't say I'm surprised in the least. Crysis's piracy was abnormally bad, but that's not the only problem. These devs need to get on the digital-distro bandwagon. It would certainly help matters.


    But it also helps gamers in general that their games are going to be available on more platforms than just the PC. And will it hold them back? I have no idea; I just hope that they continue to make good games.

    I want to say that Mass Effect didn't seem to be hindered by being a console game first, based on what we've seen, since the PC version is getting all kinds of pc-centric enhancements.



    Whatever. If the world is changing so that a person can buy a console and get more games on it, as opposed to dealing with the upgrade/hw/compatibility/driver/d-x issues of PC gaming to get said games, then I'm all for it. So long as the consoles onto which they arrive stay at more reasonable price levels.

    slash000 on
  • DisruptorX2DisruptorX2 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    slash000 wrote: »
    Whatever. If the world is changing so that a person can buy a console and get more games on it, as opposed to dealing with the upgrade/hw/compatibility/driver/d-x issues of PC gaming to get said games, then I'm all for it. So long as the consoles onto which they arrive stay at more reasonable price levels.

    Consoles have always had more games.

    DisruptorX2 on
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  • slash000slash000 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    slash000 wrote: »
    Whatever. If the world is changing so that a person can buy a console and get more games on it, as opposed to dealing with the upgrade/hw/compatibility/driver/d-x issues of PC gaming to get said games, then I'm all for it. So long as the consoles onto which they arrive stay at more reasonable price levels.

    Consoles have always had more games.


    I'll just say that that is open to debate, because it is not what I meant. I meant that if more once-PC-exclusive developers are starting to put their games on consoles as well as PCs, then I'm good with that.

    slash000 on
  • DravalenDravalen Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Crysis didn't fail because of piracy. It speced out of the market.

    Look at any decently selling PC game and you'll see that it runs on a wide range of machines, WoW, HL2, etc all run well on sub-par machines.

    Dravalen on
  • DisruptorX2DisruptorX2 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    slash000 wrote: »
    slash000 wrote: »
    Whatever. If the world is changing so that a person can buy a console and get more games on it, as opposed to dealing with the upgrade/hw/compatibility/driver/d-x issues of PC gaming to get said games, then I'm all for it. So long as the consoles onto which they arrive stay at more reasonable price levels.

    Consoles have always had more games.


    I'll just say that that is open to debate, because it is not what I meant. I meant that if more once-PC-exclusive developers are starting to put their games on consoles as well as PCs, then I'm good with that.

    Well, its all opinion and all, but Epic, Crytek, and Bioware not being PC exclusive means very little to me.

    DisruptorX2 on
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  • widowsonwidowson Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    slash000 wrote: »
    Whatever. If the world is changing so that a person can buy a console and get more games on it, as opposed to dealing with the upgrade/hw/compatibility/driver/d-x issues of PC gaming to get said games, then I'm all for it. So long as the consoles onto which they arrive stay at more reasonable price levels.


    This.

    The issue isn't piracy, it's cost and ease of use for many people.

    Even though console games get patched, you don't have to hunt for patches, the console tells you you need one then gets it and installs it for you.

    Hell, if my 360 allowed a mouse/keyboard combo......

    widowson on
    -I owe nothing to Women's Lib.

    Margaret Thatcher
  • Regicid3Regicid3 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    We're not going to do this again, are we? It's already been said but one million for a glorified tech demo? That is good. Look at the companies complaining . . . if Valve starts saying something then we might have a problem.

    Regicid3 on
  • RakaiRakai Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Valve, despite having expressed disdain for consoles, doesn't make PC exclusive games either. Even they don't think it's worth it to go PC exclusive.

    Rakai on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
  • SaniusSanius Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    widowson wrote: »
    slash000 wrote: »
    Whatever. If the world is changing so that a person can buy a console and get more games on it, as opposed to dealing with the upgrade/hw/compatibility/driver/d-x issues of PC gaming to get said games, then I'm all for it. So long as the consoles onto which they arrive stay at more reasonable price levels.
    Hell, if my 360 allowed a mouse/keyboard combo......
    That wouldn't work for me; the fun in the PC comes from being a central hub for everything I want, and it's usually user-created from VoIP to the games (mod content). I can't get any of that on a console. But i'm a very small percentage of video game players, it's just something i've enjoyed since I was three.

    Sanius on
  • slash000slash000 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    On the bright side, console gamers should start getting the true "spiritual sequels" to FarCry, instead of that stuff being cooked up by a bunch of hacks over at Ubisoft....

    slash000 on
  • DisruptorX2DisruptorX2 Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    The only stuff that matters being on the PC are niche strategy and RPG titles. And there's not much chance of that stuff going on console. I can't even think of a hardcore console strategy series, other than Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

    DisruptorX2 on
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  • subediisubedii Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    The thing is, if the figures are still standing around a million, it was easily outsold by STALKER (around 1.65 mil units), a game that was ridiculously buggy on release (er, wait, it still is isn't it? ) and far more niche, but actually ran on computers other than HAL.

    Piracy, definitely a problem with the platform. But I think they were dreaming if they didn't think they'd already specced themselves out of most of the market before then.

    subedii on
  • SueveSueve Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Eh Blud, just put your shit on steam.

    Sell hella much, ya heard?

    Sueve on
  • RookRook Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    I'm pretty sure that stalker number is pure bollocks.

    Rook on
  • subediisubedii Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Rook wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure that stalker number is pure bollocks.

    I thought it was the Witcher number that was made up? IIRC it sold around 800,000 in the soviet and commonwealth states, and the rest was spread globally.

    Either way though, I think Cervat Yerli is dreaming if he thinks that Crysis would have sold 4x - 5x as many units on console. You're talking in the region of 6-7 million units. Given the time that Crysis was released as it was (CoD4, Halo 3, Orange Box) I'd estimate more like 2-3 million at the most. Of course, it was also competing against CoD4 and Orange Box on PC.

    I really did think that 1 million was a good number to sell given the circumstances surrounding the game. Maybe I'm just pessimistic about that and he's right about it all being piracy, but I'm not so sure.

    subedii on
  • TelMarineTelMarine Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    the whole "you need a crazy PC to run this game" that flew around whether it was true or not (I still haven't played it) definitely hurt this game. It is interesting to see how stuff really is changing. A while ago, people were upgrading specifically for Doom, Quake, and other titles. Upgrading just for one game. Obviously way back then it was a bit different, you didn't have so many titles saturating the market (and those games really expanded a genre). Even as recent as four years ago, lots of people upgraded for half-life 2 and doom3. Now it seems much less people are willing to do that. Why? A number of things. Titles being rehashed with less content then the predecessor and running worse. Your customers are just going to figure "well this game plays pretty much the same as the old one, but it runs much worse. Why bother upgrade when I can play the old one still at a great framerate?" That is one issue. Two, the glutton of bad console parts with ridiculous system requirements have given the impression that a lot of PC games require a fuckton of stuff when they really don't. Now obviously some PC games require a lot as well, but a lot them scale quite well. Not so much with the console ports.

    You could talk about so many reasons why things are the way they are now compared to 5-10 years ago. With all this developer groaning, that gets plastered on every gaming news site as if it was the next biggest thing, it is almost like a bandwagon. One big company starts, the rest follow through. Obviously they are entitled to their opinions sure. Yet I think they need to re-think how they develop a game. You can't throw out a super graphical heavy title with a shittastic framerate and then (if its a sequel) have less content then before. That isn't going to fly. Why bother buy the new edition then? They are shooting themselves in the foot. Tone down the graphics a little bit, get rid of the console centric 30fps cap and make a good gameplay experience instead of so much focus on the visual experience. People are getting over graphics much faster than before I'd say. Once that wares off quickly, they are given a game that runs like crap and doesn't play well. That needs to be fixed.

    TelMarine on
    3ds: 4983-4935-4575
  • RookRook Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    The witcher number was definitely a mistake. But every story about stalker sales leads back to this snippet which makes me pretty suspect. THQs 2008 financial report comes out next wednesday.

    Rook on
  • Saul MaloneSaul Malone Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    So let me get this straight, You released an admittedly pretty cardboard cutout of your previous game that could only run on the top five percentile of computers and you are bitching about selling more than enough games to make a profit? Go fuck yourself Crytek, the problem isn't piracy its you.

    Saul Malone on
  • DaemonionDaemonion Mountain Man USARegistered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Chris Taylor and Crytek?

    OH NOES, PC!

    :lol:

    Daemonion on
  • MinionOfCthulhuMinionOfCthulhu Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    So let me get this straight, You released an admittedly pretty cardboard cutout of your previous game that could only run on the top five percentile of computers and you are bitching about selling more than enough games to make a profit? Go fuck yourself Crytek, the problem isn't piracy its you.

    This is pretty much what I was going to say. Except I'd mention a bit more about how Crysis isn't really a great game on top of needing a super rig to play it.

    MinionOfCthulhu on
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  • subediisubedii Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    So let me get this straight, You released an admittedly pretty cardboard cutout of your previous game that could only run on the top five percentile of computers and you are bitching about selling more than enough games to make a profit? Go fuck yourself Crytek, the problem isn't piracy its you.

    This is pretty much what I was going to say. Except I'd mention a bit more about how Crysis isn't really a great game on top of needing a super rig to play it.

    Personally I'd disagree there since I think it's a stellar game and there aren't many FPS's that try to give the kind of sandbox action that Crysis did.

    I will agree about the super rig.

    subedii on
  • subediisubedii Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Daemonion wrote: »
    Chris Taylor and Crytek?

    OH NOES, PC!

    :lol:

    You missed out CliffyB and Infinity Ward.

    Actually Chris Taylor is going the digital route now. Guess who's going to be distributing his next game? You might be surprised.

    subedii on
  • -SPI--SPI- Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Wow, you market your game specifically to a small segment of the consumer base (people with super high end rigs) and then it doesn't sell as well as you'd hoped? WHAT A FUCKING SHOCK!

    -SPI- on
  • SpoitSpoit *twitch twitch* Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    OK, I won't deny that it does realitically require a computer made in at least 2006 to run "well", but how many people complaining about things other than hardware requirements actually played it? Compared to Bioshock, or even CoD4, in terms of solid gameplay, it was by far the best SP FPS released last holidays.

    And if you actually read the article, a lot of it is in rather broken english, so I'm not entirely sure that they're actually saying that all their future games will be multiplatform, as much as that they decided that they needed to expand into the console arena. We've known about the later for at least half a year (their secret PS3 project).

    Also,
    Crysis as we have seen is impossible. Crysis would have to be largely changed to bring it to Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Crysis is designed to be PC Exclusive. Our internal focus is not linked to bring Crysis to consoles.

    Spoit on
    steam_sig.png
  • CymoroCymoro Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    -SPI- wrote: »
    Wow, you market your game specifically to a small segment of the consumer base (people with super high end rigs) and then it doesn't sell as well as you'd hoped? WHAT A FUCKING SHOCK!

    Your avatar and sig are awesome.

    Cymoro on
    i am perpetual, i make the country clean
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