I saw one positive in this:

I would think doing something like steam would help a lot with piracy. Single player fps games seem to be about the most pirated type of game out there.

That's a negative spin on it, but would it be fair to also say they're no longer going to be PC exclusive because they're expanding into the console side of things? With them about to show off tech for the console at E3 that would make more sense.

Not really a downer in my eyes just a company expanding on what it does.

See, I find it kind of funny because in most industries if you expand your product line and distribution channels it is considered a good thing. You wouldn't defend it as a decision because of poor consumer behavior.

Here in Lalalaland of PC game development, they feel they have to defend it while also accusing their customer base of being a bunch of amoral thieves.

"We're expanding our product line and looking into new avenues of revenue not because we're a savvy business but because our customers are a bunch of ass-raping sewer monkeys".

Thanks, Crytek.

If expanding to consoles keeps Crytek into making games, I am all happy about it.
As long as the game doesn't change because it also will be on a console... and is
that preventable?
The piracy excuse is bs. Fact is that Crytek games would do very well on a console.
Maybe it will bring down the ridiculously high demands they put on the PC now.

But, loosing an exclusive is loosing bragging rights. No body can tell me any different

I didn't say that.

And if people aren't buying your games, they are not your customers.

I don't know how to feel about this. I played through the first hour or so of Crysis and just found it...dry.
I mean the mechanic is cool and it looks like God splooged all over a jungle island, but its similar to other things I've played.
I probably wasn't going to buy their next release, and I'm in Pyroman's 0.00005%.

Let 'em go to console. I was NOT impressed with Crysis, and if those are the kinds of games they're going to continue to make, the console market is going to vomit the remains of Crytek in a few years anyway. Maybe now that they've finished their shiny, new engine, they'll start working on making good games again, but I'm not holding my breath for them.

Hey, I'll quote my sources as soon as they quote theirs.

However, the piracy excuse has been around for a long time. I listened to the GWJ podcast with Ironclad and there were also some articles posted here about the piracy debate.

The point is though, people who steal games are not necessarily customers waiting to be converted to honest upstanding citizens. Even if piracy is as rampant as they say, the loss of sales is much more likely to do with people not being able to play the game.

It's like they don't want to take any accountability for their own decisions, so they want to blame someone else. That's the real problem I have. Not that piracy is non-existant, but there is also a real obvious reason why Crysis probably didn't do better than it did but they just convienently don't mention it.

Also, I find the announcement odd because I could have sworn I saw an announcement earlier in April about how Crysis has some umpteen million copies or something. Something truly does not compute here. If people are pirating your game but you're still making money, who cares? Pirates do not represent potential paying customers! The guys who say "I couldn't find a demo" or "I like to try before I buy" and actually mean it represent a very small portion of the piracy base.

I've never understood the teeth gnashing that goes with exclusivity loss.
The more people who can play a great/good game the better.
Yes some things work better on the PC as opposed to on a console.
That is why you're seeing Civilizations:Revolutions instead of full blow CIV 4.
If anyone seriously thinks intellectual piracy is a new thing that will destroy
this hobby they need to take a look at, "Steal the Film Part 2".
You make a profit by catering to your customers, not punishing them for something someone else does.

I was offered a pirated crysis shortly before I got it for Christmas that I turned down.
Out of 6 people I know who have Crysis, 4 pirated it.
I'd say its a legitimate problem.

Wait cryteam is no longer making PC Games...??!?! Ahh who cares I'm working on my medic achievements.

Aside from the fact that conservative adobe, internal, estimates have piracy of their software as high as 60 percent? Or that there are more Wii torrents than any others floating around?

It is not that piracy and software theft are not existent, it is that they are not a threat to profits. 15 years ago the guys on MiniNova were trying to "Copy that Floppy." They were buying bootleg movies and albums from hole in the wall stores, or on the streets. Only torrents have added an air of legitimacy.

What is easier/faster for me, to reinstall and patch one by one a game like WoW or Company of Heroes, or grab a torrent with the latest patches and fixes? Or download a cracked version of a game to load onto my laptop so I am not carrying around a library of discs?

The problem with piracy=theft is that people don't buy software anymore. We are buying licenses and CD keys. Software is still shipped on incredibly fragile media. It doesn't take much to turn 500 dollars worth of software into coasters. So then what, shell out another 500? Or do I download the software that I never owned, and use my key?

Piracy doesn't kill games, poorly run companies do.

Well let's hope something good comes from their engine in the future, either through them or other developer's and modders. A good multiplayer game similar to socom2^1028 in third person on CRYENGINE2 would be pretty sweet.

I think the point is being missed. Piracy is being used as a convenient excuse but really what the company is doing is smart but they're defending a smart move. Why? Are they afraid they're going to offend the PC only snobs? Who cares, because they just offended them anyway by calling them a bunch of slimy thieves who don't pay for their games.

The gist of my personal annoyance is that in a real business you don't have to defend diversifying unless you're doing something that seems out of your market. For instance, if Valve suddenly got into hardware development there would be some hand-wringing by their investors. Even Microsoft, a company with more money and resources than most countries not classified as a superpower, had to defend, justify, and rationalize constantly their move to create hardware. If Crytek suddenly wanted to come out with their own line of mini-skirts I would understand. Even then I think they could do it without insulting their customer base.

For whatever reason, the PC gaming market is stagnant. I don't know that it's shrinking, but considering the console market is growing maybe it just looks like it's getting smaller in comparison. Like the one kid in 7th grade who never hit their growth spurt while everyone else is changing shoe sizes every three months. It's still a multi-million dollar industry even if consoles are a multi-billion dollar industry. There's no reason to abandon it but at the same time it seems silly to ignore all the money being made on the console side.

If you're Ironclad I get that because you're making a game that simply won't have a decent input interface this console generation. Besides which, I want a keyboard for strategy games anyway. I learned how to do FPS games on a console because I wanted to play them and there was actually a mouse/keyboard corrollary with the analog sticks that made the transition easy. I really don't want to see strategy games toned down to 10 buttons, I think that would make the interface needlessly obtuse.

Then you have games like Crysis which were just flatout stupid moves. Piracy my foot, other games sell well and are still heavily pirated. The problem is that you have the stagnating PC market which now has to compete with some pretty damn good shooters on the console. Not only that, but some of those pretty damn good shooters are also on the PC. Hey, if I can steal Call of Duty 4 on the PC why would I buy the X-Box 360 version? Wouldn't piracy be hurting the console sales to?

Regardless, I'm getting off track. Ignoring the console market when you make games that don't inherently have to be on the PC is just plain silly. Fine, maybe Crysis wouldn't look as good on X-Box 360 hardware, but then again most of the PC gamers don't have the hardware to run it either. Hell, if graphics are so damn important why is the Wii doing so well?

The real problem is not piracy, but rather that Crytek has their heads up their collective arses.

I've no doubt that Crysis was heavily pirated but Crytek has none but themselves to blame for how that title sold. They designed it so that only the micro market of people who have multi-thousand dollar computers could run it at its high settings and then they dedicated almost all of their marketing and hype efforts talking about how good it looks and how awesome the tech is! Sorry guys but when you make a game with such limitations, it's not going to sell gangbusters. They might want to consider producing and more importantly, marketing a title to have a wide audience rather than make something that eveyone thinks they can't play and then whine it's all piracy's fault. The thing that floors me is that it's only now that developers are coming out in droves compaining about piracy. It has existed since the days of the first computers and has always been a large problem. It's a cost of doing business that can be predicted with a certain amount of accuracy and anyone who doesn't consider that when financially planning a project is doomed to failure and is almost asking for it to a point. To act like they've just discovered it now does not come off as genuine to me.