Crysis has now sold more than one million copies

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/01/crysis-goes-platinum/

Hopefully, this will put to rest all the premature conclusions people
in usenet and webforums, came to for some reason.

And it all started because of just a single heading on some website,
which said something like "Disappointing Sales for Crysis". What was
ridiculous about the headline was that Crysis had sold 86000 copies in
US in just two weeks at the places that NPD tracks. This is as good a
number as the top-selling FPS on PC do sell for.

Crysis even sold more copies than Electronic Arts expected and US
retail stores were sold out and EA had to replenish their stocks.

I tried to post in as many threads around that time to have some
perspective about this issue and I also claimed that Crysis will sell
1 million copies worldwide by March. That was an easy thing to
predict, especially because of the 86,000 copies in two weeks number
and also the fact that the game was getting bundled with lots of high
end video cards, and finally not to forget that it'll remain one of
the first games to showcase most of the recently upgraded (or store
bought) systems. Besides, it's one of the better FPS to be released
recently.

Now, objective comments aside, let me write about a few reasons why
Crysis' impressive sales numbers got a hit online.

First of all, at the time when Crysis was released, Halo3 and Call of
Duty 4 had come out on consoles and had sold millions of copies in
matter of weeks. I think, the original news reporter had these
gigantic numbers (even for consoles) in mind when he deemed Crysis
sales, disappointing. I am pretty sure Crysis did same if not better
than what DOOM3 did in first two weeks, and that game ended up at
3million or so copies sold.

Then there's this fact, that Crysis was a PC exclusive title. A lot of
console gamers, and also PC gamers who fell off the upgrade wagon and
moved to consoles, in my opinion wanted Crysis to not do well. So a
lot of fuss was made up of the fact, that Crysis can only be enjoyed
by $2000 systems. And again, that was untrue. A $600 PC can run Crysis
within 10% of the performance of $4000 PCs that the "PC gaming is
doomed" crowd likes to bring up.

There are also those who just refuse to upgrade their systems and they
joined the "Crysis is a failure" chant. Never mind the fact, that a
dual core CPU is $60, 2GB RAM is $30 and a high-end graphic card is
$230. I don't know where these people were in late 80s and the whole
of 90s.

In anycase, Crysis took $27million for development and marketing. EA
and Crytek must be above the break-even point now and will continue to
reap the profits in the coming months. Hopefully CryEngine2 gets good
licensing traction and the console ports also sell well.

My thanks go to CryTek for bringing a PC-exclusive title out and one
that has such high production values. Its one of the handful of titles
that I bought in past few years simply to support the game developers.

One of these days, I'll install the game
--
Noman

I bitched about it plenty over the years .. mainly because
Crytek abandoned Far Cry to the consoles. That was
unforgivable. That caused me to assume that Crysis
was merely a bone that Crytek was tossing to the PC
gamers after nearly 5 years. All those delays looked
to me like a bunch of lame excuses to hold us at
bay while the Console market bloomed. I still suspect
that was true to a degree. And I think Crysis finally
was viewed by Crytek as a way back from the Dark
Side. And then there is UBI So we are FINALLY
getting Far Cry 2, and I assume it will be a good one
.... and in no way related to the overhyped console
puke that nobody ever talks about .. like it never
existed.

Truth is .. I like Crysis. It is a true techie, and fun to
learn. I am entertained by it, and I will play through it
many times. And it is not bad as a benchmark tool
for my next gamebox project. Frankly, Crysis got
me back in the spending business for new PC
hardware. I went from not spending more than about
$50 over the last few years, to spending about $450
since Christmas, and I've enjoyed every dime.

Hey Crytek! You want to make some real money ?
Go get Gothic 4 from Jowood, and do it on the
Crysis engine. Then when the cheering starts,
bring Gothic 1, 2, and 3 to the Crysis engine, and
I swear you will cause World Peace, because nobody
will have time for anything else.

johns