Crytek: No More PC Exclusives After Crysis Warhead, System Reqs Did Not Affect Crysis Sales

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The fall release of Crysis Warhead will be Crytek's last PC-exclusive effort, Crytek business manager Harald Seeley has revealed.

Earlier this year, Crytek president Cevat Yerli said that the studio would no longer have any PC-exclusive titles due to issues with piracy and higher sales on consoles. However, the company announced Crysis Warhead as a PC-only release last week.

"He was referring to any new projects we will start in the future," Seeley clarified to Next Generation. "Warhead has been under development for quite some time, and we had no desire or intention to disappoint our loyal PC fans."

Though some blame Crytek's unhappiness with Crysis's retail performance on the shooter's technically-demanding nature, Seely denied that the game's requirements had any impact on its sales.

"Other's lower perceived hardware requirements did not actually translate to bigger overall sales numbers than Crysis," he explained. "You only have to look at the comparative PC sales volumes of other prominent FPS games which shipped around the same time."

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

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 9, 2008 7:45 AM

    I find it hard to believe that the high system requirements did not hurt sales.

    I know quite a few who would have bought it but their PC just wasnt up to snuff to play it well enough. Mine included. Oh well. Ill play it down the road when i upgrade and its in the bargain bin.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 7:47 AM

      I didn't get it because of the system specs

      • reply
        June 9, 2008 9:55 AM

        Same here. This would have been an easy purchase for me, based on the videos I watched, but I don't even come close to the system requirements.

        Even worse was that nobody I knew even bought it, which is rare, due to the steep requirements, and so I've never even seen the game running. Perhaps if I'd had an opportunity to witness its awesomeness first-hand I might have been compelled to upgrade my machine.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 7:50 AM

      I agree. I waited on buying the game until I got my new system.

      • reply
        June 9, 2008 4:32 PM

        Same here. I knew my 4 year old rig wasn't going to handle it. Just started playing it yesterday.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 7:51 AM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 7:54 AM

      Is this the 'I didn't buy it due to system specs topic' ??

      If so... I also DID NOT BUY IT due to system requirements. I did not upgrade my computer to Crysis level capability until AoC came out a couple weeks ago. And by this time, I know that the game isn't really engaging enough to be worth the purchase (I've seen enough vids of horrible AI to turn me off between the initial graphical 'wow' and now).

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        June 9, 2008 8:03 AM

        The AI really isn't as bad as those videos show... don't let a few goofy Youtube videos affect your decision process so much. Crysis is a good game, and worth playing through at least once. There's enough positive feedback out there that you should be looking at, not some dumb Youtube movies:

        http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/931665.asp?q=crysis

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          June 9, 2008 8:52 AM

          Yeah, overall I found the AI to be very good.

        • reply
          June 9, 2008 8:59 AM

          I'll definitely keep that in mind. Between the vids and various posts on Shack in the past, I think I've assumed more negativity than is warranted.

          I suppose my major concern was that if I played the game with a high emphasis on stealth, it would trigger those AI problems I had seen in the vids, but I haven't played it at all so it's probably a bit presumptuous of me.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 7:56 AM

      Yeah. I have a pretty good system and even I avoided it due to the system requirements.

      • reply
        June 9, 2008 7:56 AM

        I mean, I know it's kind of a scalable game and all but half of the fun of playing Far Cry/Crysis is cranking up the settings and enjoying the graphics.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 9:02 AM

      Well I think it gained massive sells on its high system requirements as well. I know alot of people how would not have bought it if it weren't for the tech. Lower system requirements means a less impressive game in terms of rendering, physics and whatnot. The game probably sold many times more than Bioshock PC. Which main selling points were story and atmosphere.

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        June 9, 2008 9:49 AM

        Mmmm, maybe. Without doing any actual work or research, I have a feeling Bioshock PC sold a bit better just due to the hype alone.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 9:12 AM

      the thing about it for me, was a 2 step process;

      1) i didn't have the system that can run it at the frames I'd want to run it at
      2) some time went by and the 'itch to play' went away.. so i never picked it up.

      If it was better system requirements I would have picked it up, but since i've lost the itch, I doubt i will. I know im not the only one who is in the same boat too.

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      June 9, 2008 9:35 AM

      I also failed to bother with it because I knew my system couldn't handle it well.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 9:37 AM

      Adding myself...I would have bought it in a second but can't play it on my computer.

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      June 9, 2008 9:49 AM

      Add me to your club.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 9:50 AM

      Yus.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 9:53 AM

      Same story here. Found the game interesting but didn't even consider buying because of the rediculously high system requirements. Maybe I'll pick it up in a year or so when I upgrade my system for Starcraft 2.

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      June 9, 2008 10:10 AM

      I knew my C2D + 8800 GTS wasn't enough to run it at my resolution so I'm waiting for next year before upgrading and then I'll check it out.

    • reply
      June 9, 2008 10:29 AM

      Yeah this is totally ridiculous, I hope they're reading this. Had I not been forced into upgrading my machine right around release by a mobo failure, I would not have bought Crysis until way later when I did finally get a new machine.

      You can't make a game that literally requires a supercomputer to play the way it looked in all their marketing and then say that didn't affect your sales when gamers found that out. This is a lie Crytek.

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