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Crytek no longer PC exclusive
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 30th April 2008
CryTek claims it has no choice but to make console games too if it wants to survive.
Crytek has now confirmed though that it will no longer be a PC exclusive developer because of industry pressures resulting from piracy.
"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin. I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming: PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform," Crytek president Cevat Yerli told PC Play.
"Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. 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 any more.”
Piracy was also cited as one of the main reasons for the closure of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Studios and is a major concern for developers and publishers at the moment.
RockPaperShotgun recently investigated the rampancy of pirated games and found that from a single site in a single day more than 25,000 copies of Assassin's Creed PC had been downloaded illegally - and that's before the game was even released!
With numbers like those, it's no wonder that developers are now moving ever more towards the console market. Can anything be done to save PC games, or is it too late? Let us know in the forums.
Related articles on bit-tech.net
Comments (54)
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I'm not sure many people want to pay for something to beat the hell out of their machine while they experience what can only be described as every shooter for the last decade rolled together, badly..
or
look at it the other way and crysis are just money hungry greedy pigs
Hands up who sick of hearing the piracy scape goat for mediocre games....
If you want to play a game buy it, if you dont like it trade it in. If you have got the money to run a high end machine then you have got the money to buy the games.
In the past i use to buy a game and then copy it so i could have multiplayer on my home network, but that was it, i classified it as 'backup copies', i still think you can backup up a DVD or app if it remains in your ownership, if you have a few 1000 copies then i would see it as a little dodgy...
On the Piracy matter, It's hurting alot of companies... the PC gaming community is more and more becoming a PC pirate bay. There is no good reason for you to steal (and believe it or not it is stealing money) from these companies, yes they are in there for money.... THEY ARE COMPANIES!!!
Anyway I find it Uber n00by for people to download games because they don't have enough motivation to ether go to your local gaming store or bloody pick up a credit card and punch the numbers in folks How hard is that?
I would buy Crysis if there were no internet activation stupidity(same for Bioshock) and if it were slightly cheaper.
Just saying "we're leaving PC's" isn't going to solve anything. If they leave PC's, pirates will leave too...
What happened is that they deliver a small game who none is going to buy ( at least in UK) for £40 ($80).
I didn't got it and I had the machine (which I sold to a friend) that period.
On the other side there are PC games that worth more fun and value than Crysis (and cheaper!!!).
Examples? Civilization 4 (including all the expansion packs) is a huge game. A game is never same than another one. It's plays perfectly on my low budget X2 6400+ (780G motherboard) machine, on the 1080p 50" plasma tv with full gfx. It play even on my laptop (Sempron 3000, X1100 gfx) when traveling. Also Oblivion, X3, are few of the games around there where you can carry on after years playing. And this September we have Spore. That will be a good value for money and fun game which I will buy twice because my wife want to play it too.
In the mean time MS force me to learn their Robotics Studio to program AI for their robotic challenges. :D
WORD
The (sad) truth
Crysis invited this on itself, with system requirements so high people were unwilling to buy the game for fear it wouldn't work, and a single player narative with absolutly no replay value.
Personally, I think invasive anti-piracy measures may hurt sales more than piracy itself. I for one (and I'm surely not alone here) didn't, and will never, buy BioShock (even though I would actually like to - and indeed almost did before reading up on it) because of the ludicrously draconian anti-piracy they packaged with that.
Developers/Publishers should take a leaf out of Stardock's book, who ship their games with no piracy protection whatsoever - as they point out 'People who never buy software aren't lost sales' - if you make a good game, then it will sell lots, it's as simple as that.
ps - neither do I think Steam is the answer here, they are still putting restrictions on a product you have bought off them! i.e. your own property! I like having my games available on disc/offline as well and if I am shelling out my hard-earned for a game then I should be able to have a hard-copy of it if I so choose. Again - Stardock allow you to pay for the download, or for a slight fee get a disc sent out out too (minus copy protection). Three cheers for Stardock! If only all developers were like them...
I've not bought crysis. I've not pirated crysis either because I don't do that anymore (It's nice being legit, you should all try it :D) . Back when I was downloading games for a bit, It probably would have been one I would have because:
It probably wouldn't have run at all well.
I'd heard bad things about the story.
I'd heard multiplayer was probably the bigger focus (not my thing..)
I had some desire to "see" it, but little desire to really "want" it if that makes sense.
It just sounded/sounds like a shallow game trying to be "cool" that only stood out because of a graphics engine with the potential to be really pretty, but really problematic for most people at the same time. In that respect I agree with stardock's take on the matter - a lot of developer's work really hard at being the coolest, with the shiniest graphics and in so doing almost completely miss the market segment that actually buys games because they don't offer what they want (EG high quality gameplay that's going to last that can be run on a wide variety of machines)
Or do they? I heard that crysis ending up selling quite well, once everyone had managed to get a hold of their 8800GT's. It seems kinda childish to blame piracy for the move to consoles. The console market simply put, is much much bigger. As much as I hate to say it, It doesn't really make much sense for a fps to remain PC exclusive, and I'm suprised they didn't make the move sooner.
As for assasin's creed, they released it with no demo and high system requirements... People "checking" if they could play it probably amounted to a large proportion those downloads.
"But, Mr. CEO, we can't go multi-platform, we'll upset our PC-wielding geek-base!"
"So.. Just blame them for the change?"
"Oh.. That could work!"
Seems to me that extra 20 quid revenue per game is the driving force! Piracy is just the scapegoat so people don't realise the truth!
As for Crysis piracy, what do they expect when they release a game with such high minimum specs? People are probably downloading it just to see if it will run on their PC before buying it! While the pre-owned sector of console gaming is large, the ease at which you can buy a PC game, install it, crack the .exe, then sell the game on when you don't need the disc any more means a lot of places don't even accept PC game returns let alone pre-own trading! Why would you buy the game and risk it not running, then struggle to sell the disc on if it doesn't run? Just download it to test first instead...
To be honest, Crytek's ties to EA made most people believe that console development was in their future anyhow. If Crytek doesn't compromise future development of their PC titles to support the console (eg. Epic and UE3) then nothing changes anyway. Crysis is awesome and more people should play it.
A large chunk of the difference in pricing is licensing fees paid direct to Microsoft/Sony for the privelage of launching a game on there system though, which is how Microsoft/Sony make money on the consoles when they sell them at a loss. Nintendo do it as well, though not to the same extent since they make a profit on the original console sale anyhow.
Side-note: This is also one of the reasons "We don't pay for exclusives!" is ridiculous marketing tripe - a console company can lower the licensing fees as every bit as good a financial incentive to a developer and still claim they haven't paid for the exlusive.
But, seriously, I don't pirate games, and I don't buy them anymore either (particularly after letdowns such as ProStreet and Rainbow Six). And if Crytek hasn't convinced me to buy their games now on PC, they're not going to convince me to buy them later for a game console either.
I honestly don't see much of the appeal of consoles - not because I don't see their value, I just don't see their value to ME. Console graphics were by and large pretty crappy until the advent of HD tvs, where finally higher resolution graphics could actually be seen and appreciated in the medium. But I would have to commandeer the livingroom tv to play console games, thus preventing my wife from using it, and I sure as hell don't want to shove ANOTHER display device into my computer room. Also, the input devices for consoles are less intuitive to me than a mouse - I like the precision of a mouse and the use of a full keyboard. Surely, these can't be such niche considerations in the whole of the gaming market? Maybe I missed the train or something, but I don't see how PC gaming should be so easy to dismiss.
Maybe in time as more companies go multi-platform, and PC hardware becomes harder to manage and code for (current gen hardware seems to be awfully finicky), I will hang up my mouse cable and install that medium-size hdtv in front of the hallowed gaming chair. But until it becomes a necessity, I will whine incessantly about the heavy console focus of today's gaming market.
Come on game studios! Start innovating to prevent piracy instead of using the same old ham-fisted tactics, or blaming your userbase for your perceived financial losses! Do you honestly think that console games will remain unpirated as the market share grows?
The music industry has started to realise that people want inexpensive mp3s without DRM and sales are improving. The PC games industry needs to learn the same. Oh and they also need to learn to make games that aren't just paint-by-numbers-shooters. I got into PC gaming in the late 90s and there were so many different types of games (and choices within genres, and mods of those games), now you just don't see the same variety.
The development costs are a one-off thing no matter what you charge for the game. The goal with sales after the fact is naturally to recoup those costs and then some. Download-based distribution is way too damn cheap to keep ignoring. I'll once again cite Amazon S3 that allows devs to distribute the game in-house (and thereby retaining almost 100% of the customer's sale price) for $0.50-$1 for a 5GB file, another buck or two for credit card processing, and the rest is profit. I'm sure that charging $20 for that (which I WOULD pay for most games, as compared to $60 which has resulted in me buying about two new games in the last year) which results in $17-18 going to the developers is a LOT more than they would get with the publishers, retail stores, etc. Distributing through Steam probably isn't quite as profitable but would simplify operations tremendously.
Hell, use Bit-torrent. It's not like the ISO files aren't already out there. Then sell serials for five bucks a pop. Next to no distribution costs and only about 41c in transaction fees through Paypal.
The internet has this magical way of eliminating middle men, and thus eliminating added costs. I understand that they want to make their product available to as wide of an audience as possible, but in the case of Crysis I'd estimate that 80%+ of the people who purchased it would have done so online, and dropping the price from the original $50 or $60 down to $15-20 would have resulted in far more than 3x the sales with probably 10x the profits due to the lower distribution costs. Net result? Better. I have no intent to pay $50-60 for a PC game when I end up acting as a beta tester half the time. Make it that much cheaper and you're going to boost sales that much more.
I of course don't have hard numbers, but I'd bet you end up with about three times the sales for each time you drop the price in half. So going from $50 to $6.25 would yeild 27x more sales for an effective $168, more than 3x the revenue. Again, total guesswork and there IS a limit at the low end before it stops being effective, but when all of your costs are upfront and it's almost free to distribute, then the goal is a) to get as many copies as possible out there and b) to get as many people as possible to pay for those copies. The first is happening whether they like it or not thanks to TPB and the like. If they'd wise up a bit, they can make it work in their favor. Let's say there's a reason that my friend is only going to be charging three bucks for an iPhone game he's developing, rather than $10-15.
i blame, as always, the integrated graphics cards and PC world
The game runs just fine on the majority of systems, as long as you lower the options to medium or low. People get so worked up when they can't stick all the settings on maximum.
Crysis Official Min Specs:
2.8Ghz P4
1Gb RAM
6800GT or 9800 Pro
you hit the nail on the head.
i would also like to add: we in the euro zone are paying 80$ for a pc game.... is this logical?
edit: games at 30$ = paradise + me buying more games.
Chalk one up for the simplicity of game consoles.
anyone purchase a dvd to sit through 30 seconds of the it is to make copies of this and you are watching it illegaly and that you're gonna get sued. why buy the dvd when i can double click and skip that BS and the title screen and get straight into the movie.
anyone buy a game that forces you to jump through hoops just to install it (registration) ontop of that making you keep a cd key that probly gets destroyed or lost in a month, makes you insert the cd to play even though you are not allowed to make copies of the cd and even if you did the protection won't let the game accept it as the original cd. Why do this when i can double click and get right into the action instead of shuffling through cd's.
anyone tired of having to go out buy something and have to wait to get home to play it. Anyone want to buy a game online without having to wait for it to be delivered.
let's admit it we're of a society with little time and patients even though we can waste hours and hours in a game or infront of the tv. These copyright acts, regional codes, insert cd, register here, one copy are forcing users to do an extra few step that would be cheaper for the developers if they weren't in place (cd's, copyright) why can't they just sell cd keys for 20 bucks and let the user find their own way of getting the game. if you want a box and pretty pictures mail it to them, how hard is it to give someone an instant cd key?
In all seriousness, yes they might have lost some sales to piracy, but most people didn't buy the game because they believed it would never run on they're machine, They made a game that required a high end pc to run it, then were surprised when every pc gamer out there didn't fork out £30 for something that probably wouldn't work.
You can build a great PC for £400 that plays Crysis at 720p with relative ease. That's not much more than the cost of a PS3 and you get all the extra functionality associated with a PC.
I have often moaned about this
toat my girlfriend when I have seen something about piracy on the news.If they only made things cheaper, and available through the net, they would make more sales.
Whichever way you look at it £30-£40 for a game is a lot. Most people* might buy 3 games a year at £30-£40 which is say £90 to £120. I can imagine if the game was available on the net for £10-£20 then people might buy say 10 games a year which is £100 to £150.
I dont know about you guys, but you know when things are cheap you say "yeah its cheap I will just get another, oh and thats only another £10, oh yeah and that" and before you know it you have spent just as much but on several smaller things.
People are fundementally lazy and impatient, if they could buy online and download quickly there and then just like on steam, then they might think otherwise about torrenting the game.
I think most people that pirate a game(s) would not even bother to buy it anyway so its not really lost sales. Many of these people probably do have the money, as they have a fast enough system to play current games on, they are just impatient and lazy, if you could go to EA website and download the game for £15 and at very high speeds, a large percentage of the piraters would go for it.
My final point... Anti Piracy protection does not work why spend so much money working on this protection, when its cracked so easily by so many people. Just save money putting only very basic protection or none, and [broken record player] charge less for the game and let people download it [/broken record player]
*By most people I mean casual gamers, I expect that these people may rent or borrow copies of games also.
I think Crysis will be the last of the uber high-end PC exclusive games for all these reasons.
Not true. I've heard that Nintendo charge a lot more than Sony when it comes to handhelds at least. Don't quote me, but the figures I've heard are around 50% for Nintendo DS and 15%-25% for Sony PSP.
Online distribution is definitely the way to go. I disagree with a lot of the flak that EA is getting over this, but in my opinion there are to blame a little. Not for anything to do with going multiplatform, as the developers are essentially autonomous for the most part and EA is one of the few companies still working on making decent PC games and PC ports. In my opinion, where EA is at fault is in pushing the EA Store scheme. It's a good idea, but it just hasn't really taken off as well as it needs to. They've had a good ol' punt at online distribution, but it doesn't seem to be panning out all that well because Steam got there first.
Getting everyone on Steam is a good idea in theory, but consolidating the market under one roof like that could prove disastourous for the developers wholly owned by publishers if things go wrong. Instead, we need more Steam equivalents in the spotlight. Giving Steam some competition would be excellent for the industry and, though admittedly Bit-torrent and Amazon sales might work, there's little incentive for a company of EAs size to go that low-tech when they could stand to compete with Valve.
EA gets a lot of flak, but they are by no means the bad guy everyone makes them out to be. The reality here is that CryTek is to blame for this, not EA. They were the ones that made such a lack-luster game and focused themselves too much at the high end. EA were just the ones who helped them get the budget for it. EA didn't make a bad game out of Crysis and they didn't tell Cevat to say this I bet. What they did do was have a (failed) go at online distribution and keep the PC market alive by selling a couple of billion Sims games.
Crysis wow flashy graphics, but where was the story? Where was anything that was even remotely new? The suit? I used it like twice through the game then asked myself why did I finish it cause I wasted a few hours of my life playing a game that yes had amazing graphics but it was like the most delicious looking apple you ever seen in your life that happens to be rotting inside the core.
They can complain about piracy when they make a decent game.
Still cant believe Bit-tech rated it so high.....in a technical sense cause of the engine yes....but the game itself? Come on chaps bring it together good graphics dosnt make for a good game. Was it really the 4th best game of last year as well?
(No I didnt pirate it I borrowed a friends copy and used that, but if I hadnt I might very well of then stopped playing it after 10 mintues)
you know what? i am very surprised it hasn't....
on a side note, i don't see valve in trouble... and they are (as far as i know) PC exclusive....
i've bought several games on release/pre-order this year and none of them has even broken £30 inc shipping
most of them are £25 which is perfectly reasonable imo
I went the last Nvidia Geforce LAN party in 2007. ( Alameda-Area51! YEAH! )
Before I left, Per UN-usual, I bought the Special edition. Costing me $60-$70.
This is Unusual becasue, normally, I get my games through other means. ;-) And if I like them, Purchase them.
But when I got to the party I was given a free second copy. (Non special edition)
And a lot of other people where given a copy as well.
We had 400+ people registered and present at the party. Even though Nvidia was in part of the title, It still cost them to give almost 400 copies away to us all.
These guys made a wonderful product, and now, are all but hurt that pirates have " Taken " away from their projected Income!
To me, this comment is the same as them being a little b*t*H crying to mommy, "He took my lunch money!"
When we all know damn well, that piracy is good, but there are still Good fans ( *hem* Hem* Me ), that will actually buy the product if it is good. And even if it where not! People still buy Games!!
Gosh, the game is actually even difficult for MANY Pc's to run. That right there cut a big chunk of profit, alone!
Wait a week or two and it's ussually just 17 - 20 quid off Play.com