Crysis 3 - 'Maxing out' current gen consoles
polycounter lvl 12
I was just catching up on my gaming news when I saw this rather interesting article posted on gamespot.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/crytek-crysis-3-is-maxing-out-current-gen-6401405
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb4H40Vatrs&feature=g-high-u"]GS News - Crytek: Crysis 3 maxes out current gen consoles - YouTube[/ame]
Now I've been a Crysis fan ever since it came out. I still remember that when the Crysis came out it took everyone and everything by storm. It made rigs cry(at least mine did) for quite some time. So naturally when I heard first heard about Crysis 3 and saw the trailers when they came out I was hoping for something similar but I never thought that it would actually max out the current gen consoles. To go so far as to say that
What further interested me was his claim that the Halo and/or Gears of War franchises do not even come close to what they have achieved with Crysis 3.(I would love to see it go head to head with BF3 though.)
Honestly I can't wait to get myself the new rig/workstation I've been saving up for, for the last couple of months and get my hands on this game.
Any thoughts guys?
P.s :
http://www.gamespot.com/news/crytek-crysis-3-is-maxing-out-current-gen-6401405
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb4H40Vatrs&feature=g-high-u"]GS News - Crytek: Crysis 3 maxes out current gen consoles - YouTube[/ame]Now I've been a Crysis fan ever since it came out. I still remember that when the Crysis came out it took everyone and everything by storm. It made rigs cry(at least mine did) for quite some time. So naturally when I heard first heard about Crysis 3 and saw the trailers when they came out I was hoping for something similar but I never thought that it would actually max out the current gen consoles. To go so far as to say that
is quite something.There is absolutely not even 1 percent left. No game will ever look technically better than Crysis 3 on these consoles, flat out.
What further interested me was his claim that the Halo and/or Gears of War franchises do not even come close to what they have achieved with Crysis 3.(I would love to see it go head to head with BF3 though.)
Honestly I can't wait to get myself the new rig/workstation I've been saving up for, for the last couple of months and get my hands on this game.
Any thoughts guys?
P.s :
\m/"With Crysis 3, we're pushing that to another level, but the PC is just two levels beyond."
Replies
Anyways, even the first games that were released on the current console generation maxed them out in terms of raw performance, we've just found new ways to fake it or less memory/cpu intensive ways of doing things ever since.
Given that people nowadays are still managing to push the Commodore 64 to newer and further limits, it is highly unlikely that the PS3 is done doing things yet. That said, it IS becoming financially unwise to push it, because it's probably better to aim at PC's and next-gen consoles with enhanced graphics, because there's a learning curve there but much more gains to be found (soon).
And like they said, they're pushing lots of data - but that doesn't mean that it looks the best visually. Personally, I much prefer the looks of Journey and I am sure that 5 years down the line it will hold up better than Crysis 3 graphics. Just like Ocarina of Time vs Goldeneye.
Snader, you might want to read the article, hehe:
"I'm not talking about art style--art is subjective--but the pure fact of what we have been cramming in with Crysis 2 on Xbox [360] and PlayStation [3], I've yet to see a game do that still today.""
Not even 1% lol.
'HEY GUYS WE FOUND ANOTHER %!!'
'AWESOME SOMEONE CALL GAMESPOT!!'
Will spawn RROD's on xbox's though. If you don't keep your xbox in an open spot this game will ruin it.
Either way consoles have been maxed out forever. Every year engines just get optimized more and then they cram more stuff in.
As to Crysis the second one ruined the series for me.
This is just marketing with nice words without content.
You sure? FarCry 2 (Which FC3 is technically derived upon) didn't feel like any CryEngine at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunia_Engine
Also, the games are called Far Cry and Crysis for a reason, I think.
@Snader
Lmfao!
I am psyched out now!!
But like Snefer pointed out, what you are getting at, might be the art style. I haven't played Journey but from what it seems like is that the reason for that games success likes in the simplicity of it's gameplay and it's visual style. I can see as to why it will outlast other games(again it may be just my perception of things).
As far as this being just a marketing strategy is concerned, well it most likely is one. The only thing being that I've never ever heard(or remember it for that matter, shoddy morning sleep deprived memory you see ) of a developer specifically naming out games their game will be better than.
@Blaizer, Frell
I agree. Crysis 2 was a let down but hopefully it won't be the same case this time. Back when I heard about them changing the environment to an urban one, I had automatically lowered my expectations significantly, maybe that's the reason why the second one didn't completely ruin it for me.
That being said, this time around with this article and statement out, not to mention the trailers/other videos that've been up for some time now, expectation will be/already are very high and so far it does look rather promising.
Certainly not "maxed out" considering that it will, at the very best, run at 30 fps. Following this logic, any game running smoother than Crysis3 is just not sluggish enough? Or, such games magically found some hidden %s left over that Crysis3 didnt use ?
Unless of course Crysis3 is running at a solid 60fps on consoles like Rage and CoD do. But I doubt it since no such claim has been made anywhere.
Also I am the only one to think that that the "two levels beyond" bit doesn't make much sense ... as an english sentence ? Does that mean that the PC version is even harder to run, and that it is somehow a good thing ? Or maybe he meant that the PC version has waaay more graphics features than the console versions, which then totally contradicts what he said about those versions being so great.
"We're pretty much pulling all the tricks in the books to get the game running, so there will be alot of sluggish moments as we barely scrape 30fps on the console, hence our boasting statement of all out on that".
Which is nothing to be ashamed of, since all games on consoles nowadays are WAAAAY past their prime.
"Also, we decided to use ndo2 and ddo this time to make a few different maps for our shaders quickly, and they will come with the game instead of a patch for PC gamers, so they will feel like we're making good use of the next-gen DX11 stuff".
Although reading the article, I kinda find it in poor taste on how they're passive-aggressively hitting on other competing games and their tech from other companies. What's the point in that honestly? First the writer of Cry2 and now this.
I'm more interested to know if Yerli's statement will hold true for the MP section of the game, since last I recall, there was some hum-bug speak that graphically the MP portions of the game were gimped for smoother experiences across the board. If that ends up being true also in this case (outside of the PC), then it kinda puts you back in the hotseat again, doesn't it, especially since Halo and Gears already do that all across the board.
I'm interested to see what they manage to do with console hardware.
theoretically, you could measure how many CPU and GPU cycles are spent working without stalling, how much of the clock cycles of the internal and external buses are used for data transfer, how much memory is left free and so on. We all know it's impossible to reach 100% efficiency here from the start.
Also, unless you're on rails in the game the whole time, the content it has to work with changes all the time. Sometimes you're in a simple room, or fighting just one enemy, but at other times you need to display huge vistas and run AI for a bunch of enemies and calculate physics for explosions and stuff. If you're stressing the system to the max in the room / 1 enemy scenario already then your framerate would drop to rock bottom when the complexity is increased. So you need to run at 60-70% utilization most of the time to leave some room for more stressing situations.
Which means that you actually want to avoid 100% utilization - because that means you're not hitting your target frame rate most of the time.
And finally, just because you're using a lot of CPU cycles and memory and all, it does not mean that your engine is doing meaningful stuff. One could run 100% utilization just drawing a white rectangle on the screen, theoretically. Even in practice, a game not utilizing all the resources could still look and play and sound better than one that's absolutely maxing everything out at a rock solid 30 or 60 fps.
So this is really truly just useless marketing talk...
My favourite Yerli examples are how he justifies changes in his business:
What EA said about Crysis Release:
EA confirmed Crysis had sold over 1 million units in the two months it had been available in the same transcript.
Source (requires registration): http://seekingalpha.com/article/62617-electronic-arts-f3q08-qtr-end-12-31-07-earnings-call-transcript
What Yerli said about Crysis Release: (3 months after the above)
Source: http://www.pcplay.hr/modules.php?r=23&id=15
What Yerli actually Meant:
I want to support consoles in future because it will be more profitable to us both as a game and as licensing our engine tech. Instead of just saying this outright, I'm going to scream "PIRACY!!1", blame poor sales and alienate all those people who actually paid money to buy my game.
One year later: what Crysis actually sold
3 million copies. 1.5 million expansions. Total tune of 4.5 million units shipped at a development cost in the region of $31 million. Metacritic 91.
source: http://www.zuse.hessen.de/mm/Konrad_Zuse_Kongress_Yerli_Final.pdf
What Yerli said about it at the time
Source: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2008/06/26/cevat-yerli-qa
I don't live on the same planet as everyone else and can't accept that my critically acclaimed, best-selling game isn't absolutely perfect in everyone's eyes.
What EA said about Crysis 2: It got a metacritic of around 85 and has probably sold in the region of 4-5 million overall across all platforms.
What Yerli said about Crysis 2:
Source: http://www.mcvuk.com//news/read/crysis-struggles-to-break-even-as-dev-ponders-free-to-play-switch/0106285
My thoughts:
The series has sold ~10 million units to date - and the first game is one of the best selling PC games of all time. If that's not profitable, you need to reconsider your approach of development, not business. I also suspect the 'not profitable' line is simply a bare-faced lie.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/140623/article.html
In terms of Crysis 3 'maxing out' current gen I'm fairly confident it has, not in comparison to others. But if we spent 1-2 years more I honestly don't think we would gain much more than 1ms. Remember we aren't talking about art here but simply tech. There are plenty of games out there with fantastic tech, Halo and Uncharted stand out. But Crysis is multiplatform and I would be hard pressed to think of a multiplatform title that has comparable tech.
That's why they're in chronological order, and first hand. The first two weeks were poor, but the first two months were not.
But I did see the airplane mission video on youtube and it was amazing...
PC Games have always sold like this, over longer periods of time, as opposed to mass sales at release.
^This. I feel the same way about it. Developers shouldn't really compare their tech or games with those of other companies, it's simply projects a juvenile image(or maybe it's just me). He could've simply said that Crysis 3 would be miles(Eh?) ahead of the first and the second game and that would've been enough to get the point across.
I like to think that this part is simply about a PC's graphical superiority over the current gen consoles and how it is harder to 'max' them out as compared to the consoles. Makes you kinda wonder if his statement is relative in nature meaning that they have done what they can for the console versions making it 'better'' than the games he has stated(since GOW(except the first game) and Halo(Went exclusive after the 2nd game didn't it?) being exclusive to console) but since the PC is graphically superior, they haven't exactly been able to do the same with it.
Hence the reason why I want to see it go head to head with BF3. I've read about gamers with GTX 680's complain about the framerate, specially in an area with a lot explosions. Some blame it on bad coding, some just say it's just one of those games and others say something else. I wonder why he didn't name BF3 with GOW and Halo. :P
But I dunno, I am posting this in a rather sleepy state. xD