Many, many people bitched and complained that their expensive and amazing, state-of-the-art, nitro-cooled rig wasn't capable of running this new game at max. Some said that NASA wasn't capable of running this new game at max, and still more bitched that their B-Smart Laptop couldn't play the game either. With all that bad press, why is this a good thing?
Crysis pushed the industry forward by giving it something to strive for. Most felt, and not just the hardcore gamers mind you, that the next generation of gaming had arrived.
Crysis sold hardware, vendors were racing to get a product out the door that could run the game at max settings through drivers, optimizing and flat out fabrication when necessary. Many ads ran stating that this or that hardware could run Crysis at max settings, especially on the cheap. Things like A $400 gaming PC that runs Crysis maxed - I have yet to see this game running as I stated above and I'm running a Core I7, 2xGTX 280SC's with 6 GB of ram - not a cheap system. Despite all the crying, many bought new hardware, bought new hardware specifically for this game, asked what to buy based solely on this game. This not only drove hardware sales up but gave video card manufacturers a common goal, all for this little $50 PC game that they bought - right?
Not surprisingly, Crysis didn't sell all that well though it was pirated the hell out of. The reasons should be obvious: Who's going to pay $50 on a game they can't play, and specifically, play at a detail and resolution that rivals the amazing videos that were released. So they spent their cash on hardware and kept their pirated copies to keep testing as they upgraded (yes myself included, but I have since bought a legit copy as well as Warhead). What's a company like CryTek to do?
Along comes Co-founder Cevat Yurli with a heads up for the future of Crysis. Guess what? Yep, despite all the naysaying about CryEngine on a console, Crysis 2 is heading that direction. He goes on to talk scalability and how a PC will still run it better, but I think one of the opening statements says it best:
naivete is good because "you don't know [things are] impossible"I beleve this naivete will lead very quickly to a brickwall made of 360's and PS3's, you can't make a Volkswagen ride as well as a Porsche without changing some hardware - it's that simple. What we will end up with is a barely advanced engine upgrade instead of leaping to the Quad-SLI / 6 Core processing requirements that would set another flame-war-come-pissing-match in action and kick those die manufacturers in their multiplicate-not-innovate asses.
So while I respect Crytek's desire to make money and stay in business, I am saddened the new finish line that could have been Crysis 2 will not be run. We once again are relegated to keeping the software game safe for little brother to play in and can look forward to new hardware like the rumored Dual GT300 having less and less reason to be purchased in the first place. New specifications like DX11 (or even DX10 for that matter) will be nothing more than bullet points on a box; unless it runs on a console, why bother developing for it.
The tech industry is like any other: without an application for your goals, why bother innovating?
