Crysis Crisis or not?
A friend sent this link on Crysis’ release sales. Of note:
Crysis sold just 86,633 units last month, following its release on November 13.
Those disappointing numbers don’t surprise me. I’m surprised so many people expected so much more, but I’ve been ranting on skyrocketing system-spec requirements for quite some time. Sometimes it seems that developers are saying “we expect to capture 10% of our market- the 10% that has uber video cards” instead of saying “we expect to capture 10% of the 10% that have uber video cards” and thus getting some rather ambitious projections.
Sure, the numbers are disappointing. The game’s got rather solid reviews, I’m told (my gaming rig won’t support it, so I haven’t paid very close attention) and you’d like to see a success for something that so many people have poured so much blood, sweat, and tears into to work out.
I’m just not sure if the real business agenda was riding on sales of the game. I mean- someone with much more business savvy than me should be guiding things there… if I was concerned over the platform requirements, someone else should have been… unless there are other reasons to put yourself so far on the bleeding edge that you get cut. Like Licensing
Crytek always planned to license their engine- a platform that DOES seem to be living up to the hype. Based on the reviews, they’ve got a VERY solid product for that market. Crysis may not sell many boxes, but its an excellent technology demonstrator. By the time those licenses are ready for release, the market will have matured to more closely meet the required system specs.
Crysis might fail to meet the market numbercount but still succeed in establishing the engine in the forefront of DirectX10 engines.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
The question is, will Crytek, the company, last long enough for DX10 to take hold. I’m not going to deny that DX10 will eventually become standard fair, but like Vista, the roll out will be gradual.
Another thing to look at, is the trials and tribulations of the Unreal engine. Once king of the hill, it is struggling in it’s newer version to attract developers.
Part of the problem is cost, but that is minor. Many developers are quickly realizing that these cutting edge engines immediately cut their potential customerbase in half and without major tweaks to reduce the system requirements, that base shrinks even more.
Look at the top selling games, they are all built on engines that are older or, if new, are not powerhouses. Sadly, you wouldn’t know this by looking at the games media who over-hype graphically stunning games and then say nothing when they flop.