Crytek Says No More PC Exclusives
Piracy is the bane of almost every entertainment industry. I don’t see too many black market novels floating around, but when it comes to music, films and video games all of them must wage an ongoing battle to combat the loss of revenue. Hit hardest by this is the PC gaming market. Sure, you can get pirated games for the consoles, but generally that involves some mod chipping which can void warranties and prevent owners from gaming online. Want a free copy of the newest PC game? Hop on your favorite bit torrent site and chances are you can find it.
This unfortunate trend has caused Crytek, the company behind the Far Cry games and recent PC FPS Crysis to announce that they’re no longer going to create PC exclusives. They cite the superior sales of similar games on consoles as a big factor in this decision. They will still continue to bring their games to the PC, but they’ll be diversifying in order to boost their market and thus their sales. This means that the next two Crysis installments will have to be changed if they do in fact happen, since Crytek president Cervat Yerli reitereated the fact that it’d be impossible to bring Crysis as-is to consoles, so the sequels would likely be a step back in some ways.
Is piracy really the cause of Crysis’ relatively lackluster sales performance? Could it be that gamers are feeling saturated by FPS games that feature burly soldiers in ability-enhancing gear? It might simply be that the first game in a brand new IP can’t be compared to a third or fourth game in a series.