A few things:
1) Their game wouldn't be pirated so much if they had A) put it on Steam and B) not made a game with insane system reqs. No one wants to pay for a game that they can barely play, but they do want to see how well they can run it.
2) PC gaming is hardly a niche market. Steam alone as more than 15 million active accounts. Xbox Live in its lifetime has only had 10 million users even connect to the internet. Maybe 1/3 of those actually pay for gold accounts and play online. And Steam is just one online PC gaming service. That's not even counting X-Fire, Battlenet, Gametap, and more than 20 million active MMORPG accounts. PC is the place for core gamers, and is definitely the place for competitive online gaming. That hasn't changed at all this generation. It's just switched to digital distribution.
3) Crysis blows. Seriously, at its best parts it was mediocre. At its worst parts it was downright bad.
