If there is one way to upset a whole lot of people it is to tell them that their brand new (or upcoming) next gen consoles are obsolete before they even buy them. But that’s exactly what Crytek did in their comments regarding Crysis and its requirements. It is little wonder that the comments on the message boards and forums have been literally aflame. Responses range from despair, to disbelief, to pure hatred. Whatever it is doing, Crytek isn’t making any friends here… unless it is among the PC-only purists that scoff all things console. The guys at PC Magazine must be walking around all tingly right now, and you can bet those comments will be prominently featured in next month’s issue.

But before we give up all hope, let’s look at just what they are really saying. The basis for the comments is the lack of pure DirectX 10 support on the 360 and presumably on the PS3 as well. DirectX 10 (like all the others) is merely a tool. It is a set of resources that allow a developer to communicate with the hardware in the PC, getting it to put out all the fancy features that the newest cards can do. Things like soft shadowing and bump mapping and the rest cannot be utilized unless the game can tell the card what to do and the card listens and does it. Writing a custom set of tools for each game would be very time consuming, especially since PCs can have any number of dozens of possible cards. For PC developers, therefore, DirectX is a godsend.

Move now to consoles. Suddenly we have one type of video card and the same architecture in every unit. It is, therefore, possible to narrow down the work load considerably and use a set of tools that communicate with the hardware just as effectively as DirectX 10 is going to do for the PCs. I’m simplifying it of course, but that’s the gist of it.
Considering that the 360 has a triple-core 3.2 Ghz CPU, I find it utter nonsense that a developer would dare state that the next-gen console doesn’t have enough power to run their game. Show me a PC with anywhere near that type of horsepower, and I’ll show you a very small demographic able to run Crysis. Crytek is basically saying that they want to sell their game to a very small group of gamers, and that they are happy with little return for a massive investment of time and money. This is not a strategy that makes you rich. So either Crytek is just stupid, or they are rolling in money, or they have been paid off by the CIA not to support consoles…. or they are the weak ones.

Can they port the game over to consoles with a simple “Save As” option? Well, no. But considering how well Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 ran on the far inferior XBox, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that with a bit of work and some tweaks to the graphics engine, the 360 and PS3 could run the game as well (or likely better) than most PCs. Crytek is stating that they are too lazy or too inept to manage that - which I find hard to accept considering how well Far Cry worked on the XBox and the 360.

Here’s my prediction: Crytek will (at some point) realize that their sales are far too low. They will then get to work on the adjustments needed to bring the game to consoles, and release it. PC Purists will point to the superiority of their copy while console owners smirk and keep that needed $3000 for a high-end PC and spend it on more games instead. But… and here’s the kicker… a significant portion of console owners will utterly ignore Crytek’s late efforts and tell the developer where it can shove its shiny new game. If you are honest with gamers, they’ll cut you a lot of slack… but insult them without basis and make stupid comments to cover up your own lack of skill or motivation, and they’ll not soon forget it.

No matter how you slice it, Crytek pulled one hell of a stupid move, and it’s going to bite them in the ass for a long time to come.

So tell me what you think as either a PC gamer or a console gamer. How do you react to their release, and will you buy the game when it comes out?

- Martin VanWoudenberg