Download Crysis for free? You, Sir, are the thief that made this great game bomb.
No, this is not a free Crysis game download page. This is a reaction to the disappointing first-month sales of the PC-exclusive Crysis. I realize calling it a bomb is apprehensive, my apologies for that, because it’s a really great game that deserves long-term sales. Maybe Crytek’s latest FPS will get just that as PC processor and graphics card speeds catch up with the game’s high demands. But for now, allow me a Monday morning rant.
While Bittorrent file sharing sites can have benefits like sharing open source and copyright-free materials, their sharing of aired TV shows makes sense, although their legality is up for debate, and their sharing of ripped movies, music and games is obviously downright illegal. While looking at some of the bigger Bittorrent sites, I noticed that the Crysis single player demo from EA was downloaded up to 80,000 times, the picture becomes dark when on those same sites you see the ripped and cracked retail version of Crysis was downloaded by 100,000 to (in one instance) over 300,000 people! With the PC-exclusive release of Crysis making sales of a mere 86,633 units in the USA in November, this makes the PC market look like a thieves market.
If you are one of these people, don’t feel offended as over five years ago I would’ve been a hypocrite for saying this, but I’m going to call you a thief from here on out. Because you stole something that is not yours just because you could get away with it (and you pretend it’s alright, because others are doing it too)… Of course those thieves that do this will claim they wouldn’t have bought the game anyway, but considering that the demo was also available (two weeks before release and still is) the choice to download stolen goods must indicate more than a passing interest in the game, since the demo will already show if your PC can run it and how cool it is to play.
What’s my point? Well, it is that even if one out of ten of these thieves without Bittorrent downloads would’ve otherwise bought the game (or, you know, grown a conscience), sales could’ve gone from bad to a quarter of a million or more, despite being released in a FPS-heavy games year. I suppose we should expect a console release from Crytek in the future.
Let’s all enjoy the game, here’s the launch trailer:
Click on the bottom-right corner arrow to view it fullscreen.
Also watch this awesome Crysis physics demo with a 3,000 barrels explosion near the end of the video!
17 December 2007 08:04pixelsword
That’s why consoles are popular to developers… and why the PS3 will probably get the best experimental stuff; the blu-Ray is proving quite the nut to crack. Even if the Blu-Ray is cracked, the production costs are so high I doubt if an average theif could make money off of it. It’s sad because this will halt produciton on great games that need a huge budget because no one would want to take a hit like that after such a huge investment. All I have to say is expect a port; because EA will try to make their money… and all of those PC snobs who love to steal will whine once again as another port is eventually going to the console… I wonder if the Cell can handle the game… from what I can tell, the 360 may not be able to handle it.
Yeah pixelsword, you’re right about the PS3 and I actually haven’t seen/heard that much about Wii or Xbox 360 piracy either.
My guess would be an Xbox 360 port of Crysis will be using lower resolution textures and the high-end PC settings turned down to make it work. Heck, on PC Crysis still looks great with the settings turned down, so like you said EA could try and make that work on consoles.
