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No Crysis for EA or Consoles
There was a lot of buzz this weekend about the possibility that EA would be buying Crytek, the company currently working on the uber-shiny Crysis PC game. IGN checked in with the mammoth publisher and, at least according to EA, there are no plans for Crytek to join the EA family. Crytek did have some news to share at the Leipzig Games Convention, though: Crysis won't be on the next-gen consoles. It's just too intensive for even the likes of the 360 or PS3, apparently.
Blizzard were able to make WoW run fine on my Mac mini G4/1.42GHz, 1GB RAM with Radeon 9200/32MB (except when there was too many players on-screen), programmers should learn to make scalable games which would allow them to release the game on the Xbox360, PS3 and Wii.
Enough with the crappy programmers already!
I don't care about it not running on consoles. I would have bought this game for my PC almost certainly. But it only runs on Vista? Seriously. I might upgrade some of the hardware, e.g. a better graphics board, but I draw the line at upgrading my OS and disrupting every other function of the machine just to play one game. This is insane.
Will it run on Linux and/or Mac/x86? Please? Pretty please?
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
They're the borg of PC gaming, assimilating uniqueness into uniformity. After they bought Westwood, C&C became a modern warfare themed WarCraft. Yet another WarCraft clone with builder units and war factories you have to scroll to and click on to use (classic C&C had a centralized build queue with an always on-screen remote control).
I imagine FPS gamers appreciate variety as much as RTS gamers do. I sure don't want too many games pumped through the same risk-averse cookie cutter.
Thank God EA has been stopped from absorbing yet another promising game studio. I was worried there for a minute. As for the "no consoles" thing, they think the 360 is too weak? Are they kidding? There are a lot of people who can't even afford a 360, nevermind the PS3.. and they expect to market their game to the "teenagers with enough free time but also somehow have hojillions of dollars" niche? Maybe I'm the minority here, but I don't find it very feasible to spend many thousands of dollars just for a system to play one extra game that I probably won't have the time to play. Not only that, but if this is the only game that will require such ridiculous system specs, why would we invest in such a system for some 40 hours of gameplay only to be left with a machine that overkills the rest of our collection?
Blerg.
Went into an endless fall loop in one of the dungeons. Although it's frankly astounding how few bugs there are on console games.
Damn, that had me laughing. They can't be serious, can they?
:D
The footage looks freaking sweet (sometimes almost to the point of near-photorealistic quality), and after having played FarCry I can't wait to see how this game will turn out.
But how on earth wouldn't the Xbox360 or PS3 be able to run this game? I would think that, since the PS3 isn't even released and the 360 is pretty much still beginning, that the developers would be able to crank out alot more stuff than which was allready shown off in either games or previews.
Weird shit, but hey, chalk one up for PC's ! Wooyay
Agreed Crysis is about pushing the limits. About "not being like everyone else". Anyone who's played FarCry would understand this. Instead of weeping and wailing that the world doesn't stand still just for them. If the OP wants games that don't push the limits, I'm certain EA can cater to him.
While I'm sure Mac gamers see yourselves as a huge segment, you really aren't at this point. Some companies feel it's worth spending the money for a port, some don't. MMORPGs are more worth while since there's a recurring revenue stream.
At any rate the point of Crysis, like Far Cry before it, is to be an extremely high end engine. With some of the modifications they've made, like HDR, Far Cry is still a fairly modern, high end engine. Their target for Crysis is doubtless the best-of-the-best kind of thing. They don't seem to intend for it to work on every system out there, they seem to intend for it to be something that will last. Not a bad strategy, all in all, maybe you sell it to some developers so they can start real development on the finished engine now, and then in a year when their game comes out, systems have caught up.
At any rate, don't get pissey because not everyone chooses to support your low end system. There's room in the market for all kinds. There's plenty of games that support older hardware, since many (most probably) people aren't enthralled with having to shell out big bucks in an upgrade rat-race. However just like there's a market for games on smaller platforms like the Mac, there's a market for games that pitch to those that do own high end systems. If you spent a lot of hardware, it's nice to see it flex it's muscles.
So don't get mad that your particular choice in platform(s) aren't the be-all, end-all in the mind of game companies. You've chosen a minority system, and one that favours size and economics over performance. Nothing at all wrong with that, however you need to accept that the tradeoff for that is that not every game will come to your platform and of those that do, not all of them will run on your hardware.
Crysis will use an all new engine that ... is to be among the first to use the Direct3D 10 framework of Windows Vista. Wikipedia also says that Crysis is going to be coming out Q4 2006. So, now that we are all aware of Vista's release date, does this mean that no console or OS will be able to run it at launch?
People must understand that Crysis is in the "Top Fuel" genre of games. Sure, one can make reasonable arguments for Volvos and Pintos which everyone can buy, but there are people who are into the extreme high-end, and not everyone gets to drive.
(Speaking of Crysis, I'm intrigued by the apparent difference (even disconnect) in fidelity between the 'Carrier' section seen in one trailer and the 'Jungle' section shown in the tech-demo. The 'Carrier' section looks like Just Another Boring Shooter, while the 'Jungle' section is definite Next Gen stuff. I'm hoping the game will be more Jungle than Carrier.)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I hope the gameplay will be better than it was in Far Cry. They certainly can make a good engine though, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until I can afford a PC capable of playing this at a decent framerate. My crusty old Dell can't even play HL2, Crysis will stomp it into the ground... :)
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You can restrict your library and OS dependencies to APIs with a clear set of specs, but that won't make your program as reliable as a console game, because it's almost always easy for you to accidentally write code that doesn't conform to the specs but that does work on particular implementations of those specs, even if the implementations are technically correct. So you write your program, you mistakenly think it's correct, and it doesn't break on the test machines you try, so you ship it. Then some user runs your code on software that implements the specs less leniently or on hardware that happens to switch between your threads differently, and the next thing you know it's broken.
With consoles, the system you test on is pretty much identical to the system all your users have. If your program is technically out of spec but still runs fine on your test hardware, it'll run just as fine on your users' hardware. You can't test every possible combination of variables that might exist at every point in your code, but you still stand a much better chance of testing every major program situation that most of your users will encounter.
Despite all that I much prefer the PC way of doing things, however. I like it that I can buy a video card that didn't exist two years ago and it manages to make my five year old games play better. It's nice to move from operating system to operating system without having to keep the old ones around to play old games. Even for new games, it's great to be able to choose between cheap "just give me some polygons at 640x480" hardware and expensive "I want 1600x1200, 16x oversampling, 60fps high-texture HDR gorgeousness" for the same game. And finally there's a bit of principle involved, too - I wouldn't buy Tor books if they could only be read through Tor-approved glasses under Tor-approved lighting, and I wouldn't buy a Toyota car if I could only drive it on the Toyota-compatible roads using gas from Toyota-allied filling stations. The idea of handing one console company or another a monopoly on what games can be marketed to me is nearly as irritating.
Seriously this is developers thinking too highly of themselves again and Crysis is even going to carry a Recommend spec computer of "Dual Core" which is absurd. If UT2007 can run on Xbox 360/PS3, and Crysis can't, they must really suck at coding. -VoG-
Sure coders aren't always to blame, but coders aren't always shiny either. I've hired consultants that kept promising they were the "shit", that they knew *exactly* what they were talking about so you hire them and next thing you know, their work is exactly just that : shit. Because they wanna do it *their* way, or because they didn't have time, because the way its designed is incorrect....yada yada yada. For every failure there's an excuse. I know deadlines are tough and that sometimes you have to round corners but thats no reason to transform the application into a sphere!
More often than not, when bugs are emergings like there's no tomorrow it because someone, somewhere didnt do his job properly. It could be the database that is not properly designed. It could be the business rules that are not precise enough, it could be because the programmer can't do good OOP. It could be because the manager thinks its always simple and that adding people will always solve the problem or because he thinks overtime will suddenly help like god touched the "easy" button. And when you start missing deadlines, its usually a team failure, not the failure of one even if its always all too easy to lay blame on someone while conformting ourselve with the reasons why if not *our* fault.
FYI, I'm a programmer by formation, I still do development actually, but I'm also a manager, so i see both sides of the mirror. What I'm trying to explain here is that its a team thing, not only the manager or not only the programmer.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Well, the next-gen consoles had a good run... But it looks like PCs are back in the lead...
Wait... How many of the next-gen consoles have been released sofar?
My hand touched her hand. Her hand touched her boob. By the transitive property, I got some boob! Algebra is awesome!
There are very large, very complex programs (operating systems, databases, etc) that do not have serious problems. There are games that exist that have almost no problems.
Yes, you will always have bugs. That does not mean you can always use the "programming is hard" cop-out. When your competitors make games that run twice as fast on half the hardware -- when your game crashes twice a day and theirs never does -- something is seriously wrong.
It could be the programmers, it could be the management, but it sure as hell isn't "Waaaah! It's too complex!"
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
NextGen are not anymore in the lead. What is going to happen in three years? The game publishers will start to all make Wii style games on consoles to avoid to pitch false high power graphics games. I can't wait for Cryoshere to be released. But nobody will really react to this news, because the whole industry and consoles fans needs and wants to believe in the NextGen success.
Seriously this is developers thinking too highly of themselves again and Crysis is even going to carry a Recommend spec computer of "Dual Core" which is absurd. If UT2007 can run on Xbox 360/PS3, and Crysis can't, they must really suck at coding. -VoG-
Yes, it's completely absurd to recommend that users have a dual-core processor for best performance! It's only six months till the game comes out, and right now purchasing a dual-core processor is hideously expensive! There's no way any user will shell out $152 for a CPU with the economy as sluggish as it is right now. Why, at release time, the recommended spec processor probably won't be available for less than $120! This is ridiculous! If I didn't already have two dual-core machines in my household, I'd say it was impossible.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
They already have Renderware. (bought in the "Dark Summer" of 2004)
And Unreal. (announced in hushed tones on Friday afternoon)
And Eagle. (EA's original engine, still in use in places)
Yup. No amount of management or QA is going to save a product which has incompetent programmers working on it. Most likely, it's those same programmers that are going to fix the bugs that QA finds. If they do a crappy job of coding the product, their bug fix is likely going to be crappy. Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before a badly written bug fix gets through QA (everyone is human), but still impacts real-world customers.
The whole team has to be confident. Your programmers have to work well with QA, and also with the program managers, and all vice versa. And the management has to understand that good software/games take time. But the entire team also has to realize the business side of things as well. There *are* times that known bugs, unfortunately, are released.
The reason why very large, complex programs often do not have serious problems, is because everyone knows how serious it is, and it isn't shipped until it passes a very thorough, very strict, QA process. At the end of the day, games are just games, so (for better or worse), the QA process involved is not as strict as it probably ought to be.
-- jchenx