"...Why is Crysis on the PC?
Cevat Yerli, CEO and President of Crytek has a point to prove. He wants to show the world that gaming on the pc is not dead, but rather more alive than ever before. The PC gives Crytek much more freedom than a console such as the Xbox360.
Crytek have many goals they would like to achieve with Crysis. Some of their goals just can't be achieved on a console. Unlike many other game developers, Crytek have integrity. Cevat Yerli has a vision, that is to make the best FPS ever made. That milestone is just so much harder to reach on a console due to the hardware limitations.
Another reason is that Crytek have more experience with making games on the PC. They've only ever made one other game, and that was the pc version of FarCry (ubisoft bought the rights to FarCry soon after it was released). The majority of Crytek's fans are pc gamers, so why disappoint a large fan base by producing a game for consoles.
I know what you're saying. Couldn't they make a pc version and a console version? Well, please read on...
Why Can't Crysis Come to Consoles?
First of all, Crysis could be ported to consoles. It's only a matter of working out how many sacrifices would need to be made to make that achievable. But if Crytek can't reach a similar quality bar as they can with the PC version of Crysis, then it's not going to happen. If Crytek still wanted to make a game for the consoles, then they'd make a new game designed specifically for the consoles. Game ports have never really worked well. Games should either be designed for the PC, or consoles; not both. It's rare to have both the PC and console version of a game become successful.
Sure, Crytek would probably make an extra few million dollars if they did release Crysis on the consoles, but would it be worth the risk of damaging the companies reputation for making top quality games? I don't think so, and neither does Cevat Yerli according to many of his recent comments. There's also the bigger question which is can they actually do it?
Like I said, if Crytek 'can' reach that same quality bar on the consoles, then I can't see why they wouldn't release a console version of Crysis for Xbox360 and PS3. But If they did, it wouldn't be coming out anytime soon, and you probably wouldn't have the same gaming experience on the consoles as you would on the PC.
Here's what Michael Khaimzon ( Lead Art Director ) had to say in a fairly recent interview...
"I don’t think there would be any problem to convert anything we work on to the next-gen consoles if we decided to. We have enough power here, with programmers and artists to be able to do such a thing. It's just a matter of making the decision which isn't mine to make. We would just have to see how much of a sacrifice to the game we'd have to make. Or whether there would be a sacrifice at all, maybe we could find a way to make the game look exactly the same as it does on PC on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3."
Why Can't Crytek Produce a Great Crysis Port?
No one is saying they can't, but consoles do have their limitations. Crysis is a very detailed game with an enormous view distance. All that information has to be stored in a quick to reach place which is either the video ram, or the system ram. The next best thing is then the hard-drive. Unfortunately, consoles don't have much ram nor do they have a hard-drive ( which are much faster to read from than discs ). We've already seen how the simple environments in gears of war require many loading interruptions. This makes it hard to imagine how a game such as Crysis could run on a machine with so little quick access storage.
Note: As far as I'm aware, the HDD's that come with some consoles aren't used to store game data for increased performance, the majority of the loading is done from the disc. ..."
We will see I guess:
EDIT:
Speaking in the latest edition of PC Gamer, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said that while Crysis wasn’t yet planned for Xbox 360 or PS3, “Theoretically, anything could run anywhere".
"...It's a matter of how far we can take each platform", he added, stressing that Crysis would not be made for a console unless the title could be fully optimized. While Yerli’s comments hardly amount to any solid info, they’ll certainly continue to fuel the rumor mill and the hopes of console gamers for the time being.
