Another PC exclusive developer turns to consoles.

[Sir_Brennus]

It's all there - again. Piracy, sales numbers and caving in.

Crysis designer Cervat Yerli from Germany's CryTek said this

It is certainly. We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree 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 anymore.

http://www.pcplay.hr/modules.php?r=23

I'll admit that I start to believe NakedNinja's point of view.

 

[dagorkan]

Because console games can't be pirated?

 

[aron searle]

We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable

So where can i view this piracy chart?

 

[Texas Red]

Who cares? Some dev that attracts people to his games solely through graphics and the lamest, easiest genre is not worth even mentioning. Fuck, they're worse than Bioware and Bethesda.

WAAA WAAA we spent a billion on PRing and grafix and we fail to make a profit on the PCs!

Get a clue, Jesus.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Makes sense to me. IIRC, a final version was leaked early, it had little copy protection, no real incentive for a valid cd key for online play, and most people probably figured they couldnt run it very well, but thought theyd take a look see.

Additionally, imo, it was step back from farcry in many ways, short, and unsatisfying, and the game highlights some of cryteks weak points - non human enemies, scripted events, story, while downplaying their greatest strengths of open ended gunplay.

 

[Elwro]

Who cares? It's not that Crysis was a particularly good game.

 

[Ivy Mike]

Who cares? Some dev that attracts people to his games solely through graphics and the lamest, easiest genre is not worth even mentioning. Fuck, they're worse than Bioware and Bethesda.

WAAA WAAA we spent a billion on PRing and grafix and we fail to make a profit on the PCs!

Get a clue, Jesus.

That's a bit harsh don't you think? Crysis is by no means a bad game, I enjoyed the first half (before entering the alien "ship"). Besides it's also a game that serves its particular market very well, and still gets itself the hell pirated out of.

We can always just stick our heads in the ground and lament the developers for making bad games (which usually boils down to games that doesn't fit our particular taste), but you have to admit that when a game such as Crysis tops the pirate charts there is a problem with pirating. Even though we might not like the "mass market" games such as Crysis, would it be any better if there was only the niche market on the PC? It's not as if MotB sold millions for example, and neither did GC II.

Even though there it is possible to pirate for the Xbox360 it takes some effort, and relatively more effort than for the PC. I could just go to some torrent site right now and dowload Assassin's Creed. Within four hours it could be up and running. All on a standard PC with an internet connection. With the Xbox360 you would have to install a modchip, download the game, do some ISO magic (whatever it is), burn it, and hope it works with the brand of DVDs you got. Also, by some fluke of nature, most people I know who own a Xbox360 pirated pretty heavily on the PC but pretty much stopped on the Xbox360. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but it's still a pretty interesting observation, and I think it holds true for more than the people I know.

 

[Herbert West]

Crysis actually made a good profit, in spite of horrendous system requirements and the last 1/3 of the game being crap. Crytec move to consoles isn't anything new though. I recon reading info about porting CryEngine2 to consoles, coming straight from Crytec about one month ago.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

Crysis actually made a good profit

Sources, please.

Last I read was that the sales figures in the US were called "disappointing".


http://www.gamestar.de/news/pc/action/egoshooter/1476329/crysis.html

Den Daten des amerikanischen Marktforschungsinstituts NPD-Group zufolge, läuft der Verkauf von Crysis in den USA relativ enttäuschend

Translation

According to the data of the American market research institute NPD-Group the sales of Crysis in the USA are relatively disappointing.

 

[aron searle]

disappointing sales does not = unprofitable

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I wonder what the information break-down is for which countries are mostly doing the pirating.

Besides, they can't bring Crysis to consoles. They'd kill them performance wise. PS3's and Xboxes across the world will be getting sent back to the manufacturer after blowing the graphics chip.

That said, I enjoyed Crysis. Mind you I had to play it three times just to feel like I'd got my money's worth though. Oh yeah and I basically bought it to benchmark my new PC.

 

[Shannow]

DU, Cervat Yerli mentions that Crysis can't be brought to the consoles. I think he meant future developments.

Everybody knows that there is piracy. Devs don't move from pc to console because of piracy but because they didn't make as much money as they expected.

I'd also be interested in this "download chart". The last such chart I saw claimed that Fallout had been downloaded 2 billion times

 

[Disconnected]

I wonder what the information break-down is for which countries are mostly doing the pirating.

IIRC the EU countries.

Besides, they can't bring Crysis to consoles. They'd kill them performance wise. PS3's and Xboxes across the world will be getting sent back to the manufacturer after blowing the graphics chip.

Rubbish. That engine is nothing if not scalable.

That said, I enjoyed Crysis. Mind you I had to play it three times just to feel like I'd got my money's worth though. Oh yeah and I basically bought it to benchmark my new PC.

Same here. though now I'm seriously starting to love it. The first half is pure fucking brilliance.

I don't agree at all with NN's absurd point of view, but I don't think there's any reason to hold CryTek's decision against them either. If the profit margin on the PC platform isn't high enough for that kind of games, then they can do one of three things:

1. Go bankrupt.
2. Find a platform with a large enough profit margin.
3. Cut development budgets.

I'd go for option 2 myself, if at all possible.

What it doesn't mean, is that pirates or piracy is to blame.

 

[JarlFrank]

Den Daten des amerikanischen Marktforschungsinstituts NPD-Group zufolge, läuft der Verkauf von Crysis in den USA relativ enttäuschend

Translation

According to the data of the American market research institute NPD-Group the sales of Crysis in the USA are relatively disappointing.

NPD-Group? Damn, those Nazis are invading the market research now, too!

 

[Lurkar]

They spent oodles of cash making a game most people couldn't play, then they're disappointed by sales?

Plus, I'm more then willing to wager that quite a few of those pirates downloaded the game to see if it would fucking work on their computer in the first place.

 

[pkt-zer0]

Well, Crysis looks like a game you could just borrow from a friend for a weekend (essentially the same as piracy), play through it once, and stop caring about it afterwards. Not much of a reason to shell out fifty bucks for it, then.

There's also the ridiculous hardware demands further limiting the amount of people interested in buying the game.

Also:

Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more.

I wonder if that could possibly be related to the lower standards of console gamers. After all, Bioshock is praised to the high heavens despite being a step down from SS2, and one of Irrational's/2K Boston's weakest games overall.

 

[MountainWest]

The only thing I know is that none of my fellow students or friends buys PC games anymore. They ALL pirate them. If others got evidence that pirating isn't a big problem, then sure, I'll bow down. But it seems pretty evident that there is a problem. A big fucking one. At least in Sweden.

 

[aron searle]

At least in Sweden.

Who gives a shit about pirating in some shitty 3rd world country

 

[MountainWest]

At least in Sweden.

Who gives a shit about pirating in some shitty 3rd world country

this is the kind of guy I would just expect to find dead on the perimeter while I am out trimming the hedges.

Thats cause i wouldn't try to, I'd have a gun to someone else's head and tell them to get to it.

 

[doctor_kaz]

Crysis actually made a good profit

Sources, please.

Last I read was that the sales figures in the US were called "disappointing".

The game was a massive hit in Germany. It was basically the German Halo and worldwide sales of the game exceeded EA's expectations (at least that's what they are saying). Worldwide the game broke a million copies after a few months. In Germany it was the top selling game across all platforms. That means it outsold Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4, and Assassins Creed. This was still a niche game and for a niche game, 1,000,000+ sales is excellent. Just to give you some reference, there was an announcement not too long ago that The Witcher sold 500,000 copies and they were delighted with it. I assume that it was profitable, since PC games have hardly any money spent on marketing.

That Crysis was a commercial failure is one of the greatest myths in gaming. The one number that everyone has stuck in their heads is "86,000". That is the game's sales in the US in basically two weeks in November. It's a worthless number for a lot of reasons. Chief among them being that brick-and-mortar US sales of PC games outside of Wal-Mart are a small portion of the overall worldwide market nowadays. That number ignores anything bought as a digital download or on sites like amazon or gogamer.

The truly greatest myth might be that Crysis requires some kind of supercomputer to run. It doesn't. The system specs for the game are no higher, relative to the mid-range, than system specs for high end games in past years, like Doom 3 or Quake 3. I played the game on a PC that would cost about $1,100 brand new today and I played it about 85% maxed out.

Five years ago this would have been considered a huge success. This guy is disappointed because he sees:

A. Mediocre games like Halo selling not just a million copies, but 5+ million copies in a month

B. All of the pirated versions being downloaded online.

It's not unreasonable to assume that if Crysis were brought to consoles in some kind of scaled down/dumbed down form and marketed ad nauseum like other console games, it could break the 5+ million sales mark too. So I can't blame this guy for wanting to go multiplatform. With that said, he might not find the success that he thinks he's going to find. Ion Storm (Invisible War) and Croteam (Serious Sam 2) found this out. For every Halo 3 there is one Bloodrayne 2 or Psychonauts.

Crysis was a spectacular game and the people who say that it was just a graphical showcase with no gameplay are either morons or didn't play it. The game had more gameplay to it and was designed with more heart and sould than 90% of the first person shooters of the past decade.

 

[Suicidal]

At least in Sweden.

Who gives a shit about pirating in some shitty 3rd world country

I wouldn't say that Sweden is a 3rd world country, at least it probably has a few game stores where people can obtain stuff legally without too much hassle.

In my country, for example, next to no people actually buy their games due to complete absence of game stores (the only place when you can find non-pirated games on sale are a few backwater hardware stores that mostly sell shit like Oblivion, Halo or MMOs and on rare occasions - old Blizzard games) and the fact that no one wants to deliver games to this God-forsaken shithole from abroad.

It took me more than a month to find a place where I could legally obtain MotB and The Witcher.

 

[Sir_Brennus]

*awholelotofthings*

You are preaching to the choir, doc. I *know* about the success in my country, but I was taught here at the Codex that sales figures in Germany "do not matter" (http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23652), even though Germany is the biggest market for PC gaming worldwide.

I *was* told that only US sales matter and read the information that the "official" sales were lower than expected.

But, thank you for enlightening me.

 

[Raapys]

I wonder what these guys are gonna do when they discover that console games are actually being pirated too. Will they start making board games instead?

 

[doctor_kaz]

*awholelotofthings*

You are preaching to the choir, doc. I *know* about the success in my country, but I was taught here at the Codex that sales figures in Germany "do not matter" (http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23652), even though Germany is the biggest market for PC gaming worldwide.

I *was* told that only US sales matter and read the information that the "official" sales were lower than expected.

But, thank you for enlightening me.

Sorry I didn't know you live in Germany I guess I should bother reading the name tags.

This is a huge loss for the PC. It's the final nail in the coffin for this genre. We'll still get shooters, but they will be mediocre and formulaic.

 

[Raapys]

Yeah, it'll be sad to see the great and hugely innovative shooters we have these days stop being produced for PC. What ever will we do??