Crysis Warhead Announced as PC Exclusive, Developer Explains Crysis Patch Stoppage

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Following up on yesterday's teasing, developer Crytek and publisher Electronic Arts have officially announced the second entry in the Crysis series of sci-fi shooters.

Due out this fall, Crysis Warhead will arrive exclusively on PCs and is the first title to be developed by Crytek's Budapest studio. The game is said to run on "a new, enhanced and optimized version" of CryENGINE 2, the technology that powered the original.

The game's status as a PC exclusive comes as a bit of a shock, considering that Crytek recently commented it would be moving away from PC-only development due to piracy. "I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future," Crytek president Cevat Yerli said then. "Similar games [to Crysis] on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more."

Expanding on the story of the original, Warhead follows Sergeant "Psycho" Sykes as he tackles the other side of the island during the time of the first game. Said to pack more weapons, new vehicles and new multiplayer content, the title carries the tagline of "Maximum freedom, maximum explosions and maximum Psycho!"

On its official forums, Crytek revealed that Warhead was the "main reason" behind the cancellation of future Crysis patches. The entire statement follows:

As you know, it was a very hard decision for us to cancel Patch 1.3, but in the end it was important we shift our focus to some of the new and exciting things we are doing with Crysis Warhead. We have a lot of great content planned for the community and as we get closer to launch, we'll be sharing a lot of details of what we are working on behind the scenes. This was the main reason behind the cancellation of the patch and while piracy was and continues to be an issue with Crysis, it did not have any role in our decision to cancel this patch.

We also want to make sure you all know that we are not ending our support of Crysis. We still have www.crymod.com, our official modding portal, up and running - a great meeting place not only for modders, but also for all who are interested in playing new, custom content. In addition we have plans to continue updating the CryENGINE2 documentation and video tutorials frequently.

And of course, your dedicated community management teams are still here and active in our official forums and fansite forums.

The important point is that we are not giving up on our current community and we hope that the announcement today pleased you. Stay tuned for more information on Crysis Warhead... there is a lot more to come!

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 5, 2008 7:08 AM

    PC Exclusive? I thought they don't wanna do that anymore. Why has the support of Crysis been pulled?

    • reply
      June 5, 2008 7:12 AM

      Devil's Advocate: why do they need to support Crysis anymore? Are there lingering bugs to fix? Are there things they promised and never delivered? If so then yes, they should patch it more, but if it's there and it works then why not move on to the next project?

      If this was Battlefield 2 and the issues were many and they were delivering Battlefield 2142 exactly one year later then yes, it would be abandoning the game and moving on but I think Crysis is squared away, no?

      I think they've made the money they think they're going to make on Crysis and are ready to move to the next project. I sort of agree that's short sighted - people like me who are building their new PC's today are buying Crysis to test it out - but I can see why they'd want to go ahead and move on to the next thing.

      • reply
        June 5, 2008 7:53 AM

        The multiplayer still has a bunch of issues that should been adress but since hardly anyone who legally bought the game plays it multiplayer, I guess thats a non issue/

    • reply
      June 5, 2008 7:48 AM

      Crysis seems to be PC exclusive. Crytek are developing other franchises than Crysis...

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