News CryTek no longer PC exclusive

Exactly what I wanted to say, too. Comments above regarding the increase of market penetration are spot-on, also - piracy is certainly no more than a common excuse.

"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!"

 

As usual companies fail to understand the difference between people downloading the game and people buying it. I dont pirate games its one of the few areas I dont as I feel I get my moneys worth where as other media forms are too expensive for the time that you enjoy it. People who download games often wouldnt buy it in the first place so its not a lost sale as with lots of media that are pirated and claim lost sales. I dont deny there are some lost sales but its not at the levels they suggest.

 

Something that I find amazing is that people are blaming piracy for the move from PC to consoles, when they fail to realise that a PC game in the UK costs £20-£30 in stores, while the xbox 360 and PS3 version of the same game is £40-£50

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...

 

Piracy or no Piracy, console games typically sell more then PC games simply because the console market is larger. Consoles are more accessible and so target a wider more "mainstream" audience. This means there is more money to be made. However "it's due to piracy" is a more palatable excuse for developers then "we want to make more money". But as long as the PC market is still large enough to make developing games profitable, there will be those that develop for it.

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.

 

So what bit torrent client does everyone here use?

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.

 

There is definitely a strong disparity between reported pirate download numbers and actual lost sales. And this is expecially true for games which have system requirements that push the hardware and don't have a demo available. Piracy may be hurting the PC games industry, but it certainly isn't killing it.

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?

 

*sigh* why must people pirate? They just don't understand how much it hurts the industry. PC Gaming is so much better than console gaming, and I never want it to die.

 

...And another one bites the dust.

 

I often see steam game .iso's when hunting for TV shows - obviously you can no longer play the games online which I think is a pretty big part of the orange box etc

 

Well Crysis had too many bugs (including the last level one where the final boss can't be killed without restarting the level). After that I won't be sorry that they move on to other things. All they have ever made is a couple of games that you can't run properly until about a year or more after they come out when the hardware catches up. If they want to kid themselves their lack of success is due to piracy then that's fine. Their next game would probably be a paint-by-numbers-alien-shooter-where-you-play-a-lone-person-about-to-save-the-world anyway.

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.

 

its gunna look shite on a console

 

Well I can't blame them, but Crysis did have some quite irritating bugs and like all other games isn't priced acceptably.

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.

 

agree

i blame, as always, the integrated graphics cards and PC world

 

Honestly i think firehed has cracked it. The problem is EA (and co) pushing developers to release half arsed games to early then you have no choice but to sell your game through them retail. One of only a few games i've bought recently has been Valve work and tbh of all the games i've bought the Valve ones seem to be the least buggy at launch and the best supported post launch, the reason for this imo is they are less tied to a publisher.

 

This is complete crap, they were never going to be a pc exclusive, did we really think that parent companies like EA would say "no thanks guys we don't need any more money"

 

I don't know why so many moan about Crysis's minimum specs, as an excuse for disliking the game so much.
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.

 

Given I would never have paid for a copy of Crysis, what are the losing exactly if I play it? The game looks nice but, it is basically FarCry with aliens, admit it...

 

Minimum is fundamentally unplayable. My brother ran it on his 3.0E Prescott and 7800 GS, both overclocked, and managed to produce around 15 frames per second and below at (I believe) 800x600 while playing on the lowest possible detail settings. So, really, the target audience for the game is hardcore gamers with their very expensive, self-proclaimed elite machines.

Chalk one up for the simplicity of game consoles.