Buuut... Crysis still not coming to consoles
Crytek Studios president Cevat Yerli confirms in an interview with Croatian gaming wire PC Play that the German developer will no longer exclusively support the PC when it comes to development of future IP. Instead, Crytek intends to make greater strides in console game development, though it appears the Crysis shooter series will remain on the PC platform.
Perhaps of greater concern to PC gamers is Yerli's outlook on PC game development; when quizzed over the waning of PC as a gaming platform compared to recent consoles, Yerli bemoaned widespread piracy which is essentially killing business. From a practical standpoint, console game development is simply proving to be more lucrative. Looking strictly at North American industry sales data from the NPD Group, it would appear that Crysis did indeed fail to move mountains despite launching to great critical acclaim; the title sold around 86,633 units during its first month, not even breaking 100,000 copies. However, North American publisher Electronic Arts insists the title has beaten sales expectations by selling over one million copies as of February 2008.
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.
Despite the cooling love affair with PC gaming, Yerli does recognize that Microsoft remains committed to making things at least a little rosier with its Games For Windows initiative. He wouldn't confirm whether or not future titles in the Crysis series would support the Games for Windows Live! online gaming tools, however.
Article Link: PC Play
Why don't they use Steam? EA is a bastard that's why.
Pirates make up 1% of the gaming community, especially those interested in products like Crysis. They made a game that most people couldn't play on PC and now they're crying about potential sales. 86 thousand sounds about right for the amount of people that had the power to play this game. There's a reason why WoW is a billion dollar game, it's insanely accessible to even laptops from 2004.
If they port console games to PC I'm quitting Crytek.
PC is the canvas which the developer artist has limitless freedom to create, once you go console you're caged.