Ranting Kenya

I think it’s funny that Crytek is just discovering that their game Crysis is being pirated so much that it’s affecting their bottom line. Here’s the direct quote from Next-Gen.biz:

“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,” he said in an interview with PC Play. “It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.”

Now call me crazy, but what do people know about Crysis? Probably this: Crysis is that game with the craziest graphics ever that runs on like a dozen machines worldwide because the hardware requirements are so high.

So assuming that the vast vast majority of people don’t have a gaming rig PC that they bought in the last 6 months, then their machine probably isn’t powerful enough to get these “crazy graphics” everyone’s heard about or seen on the internet. So they have a middle of the road gaming PC. Are they going to go buy Crysis and risk it not running? Not likely, so they’ll give it a go with a pirated copy.

Now I see two scenarios.

1. The game runs fine or even well, and the pirate continues to play it since it’s running now, they can buy it later. But that’ll get put off forever and will never happen.
2. The game doesn’t run as well as the pirate would like, and they don’t play it or buy it.

So how many of those are really lost sales? I’d bet not that many. Everytime I heard about the crazy Crysis system requirements, the developers said that it’s a game that you can buy three years from now and it will still look amazing. That was their strategy.

My feeling is quit complaining, I believe you painted yourself into this corner. You’ve still sold a million copies, you’re bound to sell more later. Once everyone stops waiting to buy a Vista machine, there’ll be more machines out there capable of running Crysis.

Also, on the graphics front, how good does the Dunia engine look? Props to Far Cry 2 from Ubisoft. Coming to consoles right? No PC needed? That’s still smarter, despite my comments regarding Crysis.

Some of you may have seen the Assassin’s Creed PC Requirements today. I find them interesting considering some of the rumours surrounding another PC game of lofty requirements, Crysis.

Everybody that I know has applauded the graphics of Assassin’s Creed on the Xbox 360, myself included. So, if you assume the graphics on the PC are comparable, then that really says something about the power of the 360.

Crytek has said over and over again that Crysis is a PC game, they haven’t developed a console version, and that it wasn’t their intention. Nevertheless, perhaps it’s not that big of stretch to get a Crysis-level PC killer on the consoles.

At the same time, it’s truly an argument against spending lots of money on top of the line PC gaming rigs. You can use reasonably priced PCs to play most games that you wouldn’t play on a console. Games like strategy games.

Maybe PC game developers should focus more on console titles with PC games getting work on afterwards.

Update – Jan 29

This actually came out a couple days ago, but it seems like I’m not crazy, and Crysis could be taken to the consoles.

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/01/29/crysis-engine-will-be-shown-on-360-at-gdc/