Crysis, UT3 sales disappoint developers

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 17th December 2007

Steep hardware requirements may have deterred many from picking up a copy of Crysis or UT3.

Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 were two of the most gorgeous and anticipated games that we played this year, so it's a little baffling for us to learn that both games have suffered from disappointing sales.

Research from the NPD Group has revealed that Crysis, developed by Crytek and published by EA, sold only 86,663 units last month - a lot less than expected for such a hyped game released just before Christmas.

Steep hardware requirements are thought to have deterred many, as it has been hard for most players to strike a balance between fidelity and performance. We tried our best to help by offering a guide to the graphical settings in our full Crysis review, it seems a lot of you are still reluctant to take the plunge.

Still, at least all that hardware demanded by the game is being put to good use.

Crysis wasn't the only game to have lacklustre sales last month though, Unreal Tournament 3 has suffered similarly - shipping just 33,995 on the the PC despite also launching in November. Midway and Epic are obviously going to be hoping the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game will help boost the figures - but if an established multiplayer FPS brand can't sell well on the PC then we don't reckon it'll do any better with a console port.

Both games managed to score very highly with critics, including ourselves, and both games had large fan bases following them closely - so it seems odd that both would under-sell to such a degree. Can you figure out why? Drop your thoughts in the forums.