Support NeoGAF

[AKS]

If Crysis 2 on consoles looks like the footage shown in the CryEngine 3 demo, I'm not sure what console gamers need to worry about. It looked as good as just about anything else that has been released on a console so far.

I also don't see Crytek scaling back the PC version just because they make console versions. The PS3 and 360 are capable of running a game of similar visual quality as Crysis on medium settings. I believe Crytek is aiming for high settings, but I don't think they will reach quite that level.

 

[soxfanmcgee]

Im really surprised at how much PC gamers get annoyed because this game is not exclusive anymore. Im a PC gamer, and I love the original and its expansion, but what makes the game good isn't the graphics, its the gameplay and its design, its graphics help the game a lot but its not definitive.

I would not care if the game looks the same (besides my 8800 can't manage 60 fps at very high), as long as they continue to do what the first did good (excellent sense of immersion, great graphics and beyond all, amazing mission structure and design) improve the game on other areas (AI, bugs, pacing).

I think the annoyance has more to do with developing for the lowest common denominator. In past game cycles, the consoles generally started out on par with or slightly ahead of the PC, but in the 5-6 years after the PC would catch up and exceed the technical capabilities. Granted, this cycle all games generally look good so it doesn't really matter as much, but as the tech standards rise on PC, I would like to see people take advantage in ways other than graphics (AI, World streaming, animation, and effects). If your stuck developing for 3 and 4 year old consoles, it seems hard to financially justify something that only a fraction of the audience will use. I would hope it's that and not some petty elitist crap.

 

[godhandiscen]

There is a world of difference between a game being designed for PC and then ported to consoles after it's successful, and making a game multiplatform from the start. The former doesn't impact the game's quality on PC, and the latter very much does.

In the recent Game Informer Carmack said that they designed Doom 3 with the Xbox as their target platform. Now, maybe this quote is being taken out of context, but if not, it is at least one example of a game that had a console target platform and ended up fine on the PC.

 

[Opiate]

PC has a LOT of overhead compared to consoles. Even if PC specs are 20x greater the actual performance won't be 20x better than PS3.

No one is suggesting it would be. Even if it's only 25% optimized, that's still 5x better than the PS3, using your math.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

In the recent Game Informer Carmack said that they designed Doom 3 with the Xbox as their target platform. Now, maybe this quote is being taken out of context, but if not, it is at least one example of a game that had a console target platform and ended up fine on the PC.

That's not what he said at all.

He said he wished they'd done the Xbox version in-house. They never even touched the platform.

 

[Nemo]

Great, consoles needed some different FPSes that weren't all the same.

Also, PLEASE use the 360 controller setup that was used in the PC version. Finest way I've ever controlled an FPS with a gamepad

 

[K.Jack]

Im really surprised at how much PC gamers get annoyed because this game is not exclusive anymore. Im a PC gamer, and I love the original and its expansion, but what makes the game good isn't the graphics, its the gameplay and its design, its graphics help the game a lot but its not definitive.

I would not care if the game looks the same (besides my 8800 can't manage 60 fps at very high), as long as they continue to do what the first did good (excellent sense of immersion, great graphics and beyond all, amazing mission structure and design) improve the game on other areas (AI, bugs, pacing).

The game design is what may suffer the most. An island such as the one from the original Crysis would not make it, because of the consoles, so we should expect a much more linear game, as a result of the multiplat development.

Graphics are the last worry on the list. Of course the PC version will look better.

 

[Liabe Brave]

That's not what he said at all.

He said he wished they'd done the Xbox version in-house. They never even touched the platform.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that is what he said--but you're also correct that it was outsourced. The point of his quote was that the game was intended to look a particular way, and that look was targeted to be possible on the Xbox hardware. In the end, only PC was able to achieve the look, and Xbox fell short due to the outsourcing. (The quote was in reference to how, in contrast, they're doing Rage themselves.)

This is germane to the current case because Crytek will clearly have a visual target, and clearly think their engine is capable of achieving it on all three systems, especially since they're developing it in-house. Some folks think that both Crytek and Carmack are too optimistic, and just because they're the original devs doesn't mean they'll be able to eke PC-level performance out of the console hardware. I tend to agree (though the variability of PC hardware of course means there's some level of "the same on console and PC" that's going to be true, and used to claim target hit).

 

[AKS]

Cevat Yerli addresses many of the concerns people have about in this article. I forgot were I had seen this information.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/966/966403p1.html

CryEngine 2 will continue to be used for some future PC titles, but he states that CryEngine 3 engine is on par or better than CryEngine 2, including on PC. Don't expect a big performance jump on PC, as it appears that they will look similar, but how many here even on a gaming enthusiast website is that going to adversely impact? Very few are running Crysis on max specs, res, and AA.

 

[Rorschach]

Sweet. I hope it's consolefied to the max.

 

[-SD-]

3 weeks until gamescom!

I bet we'll see first Crysis 2 media

 

[Fersis]

3 weeks until gamescom!

I bet we'll see first Crysis 2 media

That would be nice.
And if they can put a 'lite' version of Sandbox on it... well you have a winner right there.

 

[dLMN8R]

Im really surprised at how much PC gamers get annoyed because this game is not exclusive anymore. Im a PC gamer, and I love the original and its expansion, but what makes the game good isn't the graphics, its the gameplay and its design, its graphics help the game a lot but its not definitive.

I would not care if the game looks the same (besides my 8800 can't manage 60 fps at very high), as long as they continue to do what the first did good (excellent sense of immersion, great graphics and beyond all, amazing mission structure and design) improve the game on other areas (AI, bugs, pacing).

I don't remember what happened in this thread and I'm not going to look back on it, but I don't think "PC gamers got annoyed" that this isn't exclusive.

On the contrary, they're skeptical for good reason, since the gameplay might possibly be compromised depending on what they need to do to the environments, destructibility, AI, and other systems to get the game to work right on consoles.

These are things that have fundamental effects on the game, and cannot be easily tweaked to take better advantage of PCs for the PC version. In other words, if those systems need to be dumbed down for consoles, there's little chance that that PC version would retain what the original Crysis had.


It's not about graphical fidelity. Graphical fidelity is a no-brainer. Crytek can go apeshit all they want with fancier shaders, higher-resolution textures, and more to take advantage of whatever PC hardware is out at the time. This is about how the gameplay might be affected, mostly by the memory limitations of the consoles.

Because remember - even the lowest-end PC that you can play Crysis on still has 1.5GB system memory and 256MB dedicated video memory.

That means that, even on the lowest of low-spec Crysis, there is practically no memory limitation, meaning that open-ended gameplay, destructibility, persistent AI, and other aspects can be preserved. On consoles, not so.

 

[godhandiscen]

That's not what he said at all.

He said he wished they'd done the Xbox version in-house. They never even touched the platform.

He did say that. Their engine targeted the Xbox as their main platform. I am not saying they developed the Xbox version.

 

[Spoit]

Cevat Yerli addresses many of the concerns people have about in this article. I forgot were I had seen this information.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/966/966403p1.html

CryEngine 2 will continue to be used for some future PC titles, but he states that CryEngine 3 engine is on par or better than CryEngine 2, including on PC. Don't expect a big performance jump on PC, as it appears that they will look similar, but how many here even on a gaming enthusiast website is that going to adversely impact? Very few are running Crysis on max specs, res, and AA.

Cevat has shown a tendency to stretch the truth a bit. Besides, as DLMN8R pointed out, the problem isn't the engine, it's the RAM on consoles, and how they negatively effect gameplay

 

[Kibbles]

Cevat has shown a tendency to stretch the truth a bit. Besides, as DLMN8R pointed out, the problem isn't the engine, it's the RAM on consoles, and how they negatively effect gameplay

RAM upgraded bundled with Crysis 2 am confirmed.

 

[NovemberMike]

Crysis 2: Invisible War?

Dear god I hope not.

 

[Frenck]

The original Xbox ran games like HL2, Chaos Theory and Riddick with only 64 mb of RAM. The architecture of both platforms simply isn't comparable.

We still have some years to go before system memory will be a problem. As far as I know devs haven't even begun dividing levels into smaller sections in PC -> console ports yet.

 

[dLMN8R]

The original Xbox ran games like HL2, Chaos Theory and Riddick with only 64 mb of RAM. The architecture of both platforms simply isn't comparable.

We still have some years to go before system memory will be a problem. As far as I know devs haven't even begun dividing levels into smaller sections in PC -> console ports yet.

Half-Life 2 was fucking CRIPPLED by a ridiculous number of added checkpoints specifically because of the memory constraints.

You haven't seen the same happen in a PC-->360 port yet because you haven't see many (any?) designed-for-PC games come to 360. Because of the nature of the business across all platforms, everything is multiplatform these days, and games are designed from the ground-up with the 360/PS3 memory limitations in mind.

Crysis 2 will be the first test this console generation of a game with a heritage in PC-exclusive territory being made multi-platform.

 

[Wollan]

Half-Life 2 was fucking CRIPPLED by a ridiculous number of added checkpoints specifically because of the memory constraints.

They should have had a streaming solution (this was/is also a complaint about the pc version). Especially since HL2 doesn't 'teleport' between destinations. You walk every mile yourself.

 

[dLMN8R]

Well yeah, I'm still hoping that's what is taking Episode Three so long - so that Valve can finally implement some sort of level streaming into the Source engine. But still, memory constraints crippled the XBox version, which goes directly against the point that guy was trying to make.

Chaos Theory and Riddick, once again, were built from the ground-up with the XBox in mind, not the PC. Again not valid examples to use in this case.

 

[Nirolak]

Crysis 2 will be the first test this console generation of a game with a heritage in PC-exclusive territory being made multi-platform.

Actually, I think Supreme Commander 2 is launching first judging by the amount of marketing its had so far.

 

[Tzeentch]

I haven't seen any announcement of Sandbox availability yet. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised given how their previous pre-SDK plan fell flat on its face for Crysis. Lets hope they don't go the crippled editor route like Far Cry 2 and Halo 3 did.

 

[Asmodai]

I haven't seen any announcement of Sandbox availability yet. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised given how their previous pre-SDK plan fell flat on its face for Crysis. Lets hope they don't go the crippled editor route like Far Cry 2 and Halo 3 did.

Lumping Far Cry 2 in with Halo 3 regarding map editors is not an accurate representation of reality.

Halo 3 is a castrated map editor that is basically useless unless you like stacking boxes into interesting shapes or something weird. Far Cry 2 is easily the most powerful map creator on consoles, and better than a lot of PC games to boot. Incredibly easy to use, which is one of the most important aspects of it.

Hell, the popular "Sandbox" mod for Battlefield 2 was more limited and harder to use than the Far Cry 2 map creator.

 

[Decado]

I don't think there is any doubt that a game designed for the PC (not taking consoles into account at all) will turn out better than a multiplatform game, but that doesn't mean multiplatform games can't be great (as we've seen many of them).

That said, I don't expect much from this game. Most PC exclusive developers produce noticeablly weaker games when they turn to consoles. Part of it may be that they don't have the luxury of focusing their technology, but there are a lot of other factors, too. Since PC gaming won't be recovering any time soon, I see it as inevitable, and no longer concern myself with "better or worse on the PC" (though perhaps if my some new games from my favourite PC franchises get announced...).

 

[Ceebs]

Since PC gaming won't be recovering any time soon

Things like this bug the hell out of me. PC gaming is perfectly healthy, just some people (including publishers) like to think that software should preform like console games in terms of sales.

 

[soxfanmcgee]

Things like this bug the hell out of me. PC gaming is perfectly healthy, just some people (including publishers) like to think that software should preform like console games in terms of sales.

Agreed. On PC, as long as there are some dudes playing in the servers and its fun, I'm there.

 

[DieNgamers]

3 weeks until gamescom!

I bet we'll see first Crysis 2 media

Is this the games convention under a new name?

 

[StuBurns]

Is this the games convention under a new name?

Well, it's at a different place, but yeah.

 

[Nirolak]

Is this the games convention under a new name?

It kind of replaced the games convention because the develop conference moved cities but the Liepzig games convention didn't want to.

 

[-SD-]

SIGGRAPH starts today: http://www.siggraph.org/s2009/

Perhaps some new CryEngine 3 footage will appear this week...

 

[Spoit]

Things like this bug the hell out of me. PC gaming is perfectly healthy, just some people (including publishers) like to think that software should preform like console games in terms of sales.

Well, yeah. As long as the publishers think PC gaming is dead, we're not going to see many PC centric games outsided of well funded, semi-independent devs. And central/eastern europe.

 

[ghst]

Well, yeah. As long as the publishers think PC gaming is dead, we're not going to see many PC centric games outsided of well funded, semi-independent devs. And central/eastern europe.

it's not pc gaming, it's specialist gaming of any kind. i'm sure there are atleast a million+ eager customers who would happily pony up for a keyboard spamming, mandatory joystick, pc exclusive space-sim, but thats just not the way the spice is flowing. dumb that shit down, make its appeal as wide and nondescript as possible, and try and scrape a few thousand buyers from every demographic going.

this is the ultimate failing of the hd generation.

 

[Parham]

Well, yeah. As long as the publishers think PC gaming is dead, we're not going to see many PC centric games outsided of well funded, semi-independent devs. And central/eastern europe.

One key thing to remember is that even the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 do not have as many exclusives as consoles from the previous generation. The cost of developing a game has simply become much too large for a third party publisher to stick to one console. And because the PC is an inherently open platform, it doesn't have an equivalent to first party exclusives. For this very reason, we are seeing the number of major PC exclusives diminish year after year. So ultimately, it has less to with piracy and more to do with the increasing need for publishers to sell more copies of their games to make a substantial return on investment.

Edit: Typo

 

[kittoo]

One key thing to remember is that even consoles do not have as many exclusives as the previous generations. The cost of developing a game has simply become much too large for a third party publisher to stick to one console. And because the PC is an inherently open platform, it doesn't have an equivalent to first party exclusives. For this very reason we are seeing the number of major PC exclusives diminish year after year. So ultimately, it has less to with piracy and more to do with the increasing need for publishers to sell more copies of their games to make a substantial return on investment.

Agreed. This is one short and insightful post.
Also, PC still has so many great exclusive for those who can look outside the cluster of hyped games. I just stumbled upon 'Drakensang: The dark eye' one day and boy am I glad that I got that game. It was one hell of a game. From that day, I constantly see if any 'not so hyped' game is good, and believe me, there are so many of them!

 

[Spoit]

One key thing to remember is that even the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 do not have as many exclusives as consoles from the previous generation. The cost of developing a game has simply become much too large for a third party publisher to stick to one console. And because the PC is an inherently open platform, it doesn't have an equivalent to first party exclusives. For this very reason, we are seeing the number of major PC exclusives diminish year after year. So ultimately, it has less to with piracy and more to do with the increasing need for publishers to sell more copies of their games to make a substantial return on investment.

Edit: Typo

I'm not even talking about exclusives, I'm talking about PC lead games. The only one I can think of that's halfway recent in Dragon Age, which has been in development (for the PC) since like kotor

 

[Violater]

no pics yet? gahhh

 

[Ceebs]

I'm not even talking about exclusives, I'm talking about PC lead games. The only one I can think of that's halfway recent in Dragon Age, which has been in development (for the PC) since like kotor

What about every game Valve makes?

 

[Spoit]

no pics yet? gahhh

You know Crysis (1)? It's probably like that, without a few of the higher end effects. And worse textures.

 

[Violater]

You know Crysis (1)? It's probably like that, without a few of the higher end effects. And worse textures.

Not funny, not in the least.

 

[Parham]

I'm not even talking about exclusives, I'm talking about PC lead games. The only one I can think of that's halfway recent in Dragon Age, which has been in development (for the PC) since like kotor

Again, this has to do with more games this generation being multiplatform. PC games and consoles games last generation were almost entirely separate. Aside from a couple of experiments, you would rarely ever see a console port of a PC game or vice versa. For this very reason, PC games at the time were naturally built from the ground up for the PC. However, now we are seeing the majority of the console and PC game library converge. And because the Xbox 360 is the platform which sells the most games, developers now lead on the 360. We saw something similar to this last generation with the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. Almost every multiplatform game was primarily developed with PS2 in mind.

Edit: For what it's worth, Capcom, Valve, and Bioware usually lead on PC.

 

[Ceebs]

Again, this has to do with more games this generation being multiplatform. PC games and consoles games last generation were almost entirely separate. Aside from a couple of experiments, you would rarely ever see a console port of a PC game or vice versa. For this very reason, PC games at the time were naturally built from the ground up for the PC. However, now we are seeing the majority of the console and PC game library converge. And because the Xbox 360 is the platform which sells the most games, developers now lead on the 360. We saw something similar to this last generation with the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. Almost every multiplatform game was primarily developed with PS2 in mind.

The bright side of this for PC people is unless you want the console exclusives, you get most of the games without buying anything extra.

 

[Pantheon Of The Lesser]

console money tastes very good. ask Epic or Valve. if Crysis 2 and Rage do well on consoles (i think both will easily pass the 2 million WW mark on 360 alone), watch as iD and Crytek drift slowly away from PC gaming.

dirty console peasants, as that outdated image describes it, are willing to pay more for games and don't mind dishing out extra $ for downloadable content. it's every publisher's dream to appeal to us. there's only one left, Blizzard, which will eventually join the dirty dark side of peasantry.

 

[Ceebs]

console money tastes very good. ask Epic or Valve. if Crysis 2 and Rage do well on consoles (i think both will easily pass the 2 million WW mark on 360 alone), watch as iD and Crytek drift slowly away from PC gaming.

dirty console peasants, as that outdated image describes it, are willing to pay more for games and don't mind dishing out extra $ for downloadable content. it's every publisher's dream to appeal to us. there's only one left, Blizzard, which will eventually join the dirty dark side of peasantry.

WoW probably makes them more money per year than some publishers see in a year a total.

 

[Spoit]

Not funny, not in the least.

I wasn't joking. Cryengine 3 actually looks pretty much like CE2. And there's no real reason for a sudden art style change, espcially considering how similar the art style of crysis was to far cry

WoW probably makes them more money per year than some publishers see in a year a total.

WoW probably makes more in a month than most do in a year

 

[-SD-]

Trailers am confirmed

http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=815&Itemid=1

 

[John]

All I can hope for is that while developing the console version they find out how to make the interface a little friendlier. Having to hold the crouch button is a real bother. (any way to change that?)

 

[TitaniumGroceries]

All I can hope for is that while developing the console version they find out how to make the interface a little friendlier. Having to hold the crouch button is a real bother. (any way to change that?)

Just go to options and change it to "toggle."

 

[TouchMyBox]

Trailers am confirmed

http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=815&Itemid=1

Hopefully the trailer is comprised of PC footage so we can see if this engine is actually any improvement over CryEngine 2 and not just CE2 ported to consoles.

 

[Shaheed79]

Ain't THIS some shit. Guess we'll be waiting a while for Crytek to take advantage of new PC hardware. I'd rather they make an all new game for PC and do Crysis 2 for just the consoles.