Crysis 2 announced. Coming to consoles.

[Queasy]

Unsurprising after the CryEngine was displayed on the PS3 and 360 earlier this year.

Electronic Arts will publish Crysis 2 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, the company has announced with developer Crytek.

Frankfurt,? ?Germany-based Crytek said that the sequel to the highly rated PC shooter Crysis, which will be the developer's first console game, will also be the debut title built using its new multiplatform CryEngine 3 tech, which the company said previously it was readying for the next generation of console hardware in 2012.

?The development of Crysis 2 marks a major stepping stone for our studio,? said Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli. ?This is not only the next game in the Crysis franchise, it?s the first title we are developing for consoles and the first title being built on CryEngine 3. We are excited to have the support of EA Partners again as we work together to make the launch of Crysis 2 a huge event.?

EA Partners? David DeMartini added: ?Crytek is already one of the elite PC development studios in the world and we are excited to have the opportunity to partner with them in bringing their award-winning technology and gameplay to more platforms and a wider audience with Crysis 2."

 

[biggestmuff]

I wonder if this game will be one of those with the built-in, forward compatibility. Remember that story? MS had been meeting with developers discussing the utilization of the rest of the DVD's disc space to add forward-compatibility code for their next gen console. If Crytek has been developing CryEngine 3 for nexgen consoles, then maybe...ah, who knows. 🙂

 

[nitromullet]

I'm surprised this dropped down to page 2 so quickly with only one comment. IMO, Crysis (especially Warhead) was the PC exclusive that had the fast pacing of a console game. This is awesome news.

 

[gorcorps]

I really hope they don't 'consolize' it and ruin what was great about the first one. IMO crysis is almost TOO wide open for a console to render properly. GTAIV had some severe texture pop-in problems (more so on the 360) and that wasn't that great looking either. Hopefully that's not an issue and they can make the game they want w/out cutting back solid gameplay.

 

[SunnyD]

Have fun RRODing your XBoxes with a crappy unoptimized horribly over-hyped game and engine.

 

[purbeast0]

considering crysis felt very average, this doesn't excite me.

 

[purbeast0]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Have fun RRODing your XBoxes with a crappy unoptimized horribly over-hyped game and engine.

go back to your PC forums thx

 

[mmntech]

The big problem with Crysis IMO was it was too much of a tech demo. The system requirements to really do it justice were just to high. Crytek really needed to tone it down a bit. Should be interesting to see how the console versions end up. Both the 360 and PS3, the latter especially, have a lot of untapped power provided Crytek codes the game efficiently enough.

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Have fun RRODing your XBoxes with a crappy unoptimized horribly over-hyped game and engine.

:roll: ...riiiiight.

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: mmntech
The big problem with Crysis IMO was it was too much of a tech demo. The system requirements to really do it justice were just to high. Crytek really needed to tone it down a bit. Should be interesting to see how the console versions end up. Both the 360 and PS3, the latter especially, have a lot of untapped power provided Crytek codes the game efficiently enough.

It'll end up looking like all other games; virtually identical on both consoles with a slightly softer image on the PS3.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: mmntech
The big problem with Crysis IMO was it was too much of a tech demo. The system requirements to really do it justice were just to high. Crytek really needed to tone it down a bit. Should be interesting to see how the console versions end up. Both the 360 and PS3, the latter especially, have a lot of untapped power provided Crytek codes the game efficiently enough.

That's a big... HUUUUUGE if.

 

[Beev]

I hope my PC version doesn't end up being watered down because of this like they usually are =/

 

[Fox5]

Considering the consoles barely have the specs to run Farcry (1) maxed out, I can't see them doing justice to Crysis 2.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Beev
I hope my PC version doesn't end up being watered down because of this like they usually are =/

Crysis 1 still can't run perfect on top end hardware, I think the vast majority will be fine with Crysis 2.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: mmntech
The big problem with Crysis IMO was it was too much of a tech demo. The system requirements to really do it justice were just to high. Crytek really needed to tone it down a bit. Should be interesting to see how the console versions end up. Both the 360 and PS3, the latter especially, have a lot of untapped power provided Crytek codes the game efficiently enough.

That's a big... HUUUUUGE if.

It's mostly a myth fabricated by Sony that the PS3 has untapped power.

The Cell processor is horrible for game performance and a nightmare to code for. Even if they spent a great deal of time working on it, it wouldn't improve game performance by very much.

The PS3 has a 7800GTX. Forgetting about the nightmare cpu the PS3 has, even if it had a 10Ghz Core 2 Quad, you still won't run anything better looking than Unreal Engine 3 and Killzone 2 with just a 7800GTX and the 256MB of ram the PS3 has.

The big point that makes this relevant is that if Crysis 2 is able to be played on the consoles, you can rest assured that it will be severely dumbed down compared to Crysis 1 when it comes to wide open areas and visuals.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Fox5
Considering the consoles barely have the specs to run Farcry (1) maxed out, I can't see them doing justice to Crysis 2.

CryEngine 3 Consoles vs CryEngine 2 PC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMZEO3z4maE&NR=1

...I'm sure it will be 720p or less though with 0xAA.

 

[habbakuk87]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: mmntech
The big problem with Crysis IMO was it was too much of a tech demo. The system requirements to really do it justice were just to high. Crytek really needed to tone it down a bit. Should be interesting to see how the console versions end up. Both the 360 and PS3, the latter especially, have a lot of untapped power provided Crytek codes the game efficiently enough.

That's a big... HUUUUUGE if.

It's mostly a myth fabricated by Sony that the PS3 has untapped power.

The Cell processor is horrible for game performance and a nightmare to code for. Even if they spent a great deal of time working on it, it wouldn't improve game performance by very much.

The PS3 has a 7800GTX. Forgetting about the nightmare cpu the PS3 has, even if it had a 10Ghz Core 2 Quad, you still won't run anything better looking than Unreal Engine 3 and Killzone 2 with just a 7800GTX and the 256MB of ram the PS3 has.

The big point that makes this relevant is that if Crysis 2 is able to be played on the consoles, you can rest assured that it will be severely dumbed down compared to Crysis 1 when it comes to wide open areas and visuals.

AFAIR when programming for the PS3 rendering through gfx chip can entirely be bypassed with all calculations done on CELL BE.There is also an engine Phyre engine IIRC which does this.

 

[BenSkywalker]

The Cell processor is horrible for game performance

Whoever told you that was either ignorant or a liar.

Said another way, Cell is so bad at game performance Intel and MS both decided to rip their design ideas off to use for their own game based chips. Ageia too actually 😛

The PS3 has a 7800GTX. Forgetting about the nightmare cpu the PS3 has, even if it had a 10Ghz Core 2 Quad, you still won't run anything better looking than Unreal Engine 3 and Killzone 2 with just a 7800GTX and the 256MB of ram the PS3 has.

The PS2 had a souped up Voodoo1 class chip and 32MB of RAM, please go play GT4 keeping that in mind and then come back in and discuss fixed platform performance compared to your favored.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

The Cell processor is horrible for game performance

Whoever told you that was either ignorant or a liar.

Said another way, Cell is so bad at game performance Intel and MS both decided to rip their design ideas off to use for their own game based chips. Ageia too actually 😛

Anandtech had their own article regarding the terrible performance of both the PS3 and 360 CPU for games back before their launch. It was taken down for reasons I don't know. The main point the article made was that a single core Athlon 64 would have been a significantly better processor than either the one in the 360 or the PS3. In order vs out of order and such. My understanding of it is the processors in the PS3 and 360 aren't there because they are the best technology for the job, they are there because IBM gave them a better deal than their competitors. My understanding of the balance of hardware performance of both platforms overall was that both the 360 and the PS3 have pretty weak CPUs and comparatively powerful GPUs(Which makes sense because budget gaming computers are usually are built that way as well). I'm only speaking of the task performed by a cpu running a game though. I'm well aware that the Cell can be a number crunching monster given the right code, but that doesn't happen to be the game code a processor typically runs as far as I know.

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

The PS3 has a 7800GTX. Forgetting about the nightmare cpu the PS3 has, even if it had a 10Ghz Core 2 Quad, you still won't run anything better looking than Unreal Engine 3 and Killzone 2 with just a 7800GTX and the 256MB of ram the PS3 has.

The PS2 had a souped up Voodoo1 class chip and 32MB of RAM, please go play GT4 keeping that in mind and then come back in and discuss fixed platform performance compared to your favored.

I'm not saying that Console and PC specs are 1:1 comparable, I know that they aren't. However, there's no way enough performance can be gained from being a single platform to program for that can close the performance gap between the 7800 and the GTX 285(roughly what is needed to run Crysis maxed out nicely, not even taking the 256MB of ram a PS3 has vs the 2GB of ram Crysis on the PC uses into account yet either). GT4 has very good looking cars and extremely bland and simple everything else(The game is considered good looking because you don't really look at anything but the cars). It's more of just being very intelligent with the resources at hand to make something that isn't that impressive overall look impressive by directing your focus away from the ugly stuff.

Crysis won't work like that because it is a gigantic expansive game that will be very difficult to put onto a machine with 256MB of ram. I can only see them doing one of two things. 1. Keep the environment as wide open as Crysis 1 was but reduce visuals big time, or 2. Keep the visual detail consistent with Crysis but make the actual size of the environments much smaller and more linear. There's no reason why they couldn't do a combination of both though, some small but really detailed levels and some huge but more bland levels. No such compromises are needed on the PC. The problem is they most likely aren't going to make two different games. People with high end PCs are going to have to play the version that is simplified to run on consoles.

They put Doom 3 on the Xbox. Many people thought it couldn't be done, but they did it and did a pretty nice job of it too. The game was still visually reduced to make it happen though. Crysis 2 going to consoles will probably be similar to that. I doubt they have the power even if fully utilized to replicate the gaming experience offered by Crysis 1 in full detail.

 

[fatpat268]

I'll stick with crysis on the pc, tyvm.

Besides, the requirements aren't all that bad anymore.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Anandtech had their own article regarding the terrible performance of both the PS3 and 360 CPU for games back before their launch. It was taken down for reasons I don't know. The main point the article made was that a single core Athlon 64 would have been a significantly better processor than either the one in the 360 or the PS3. In order vs out of order and such. My understanding of it is the processors in the PS3 and 360 aren't there because they are the best technology for the job, they are there because IBM gave them a better deal than their competitors. My understanding of the balance of hardware performance of both platforms overall was that both the 360 and the PS3 have pretty weak CPUs and comparatively powerful GPUs(Which makes sense because budget gaming computers are usually are built that way as well). .

While the PS3 processor is a bitch to program for, the Xbox processor is not. It's a standard symmetrical 3 core processor with hyperthreading to get a total of 6 hardware threads. Programming for it shouldn't be any harder than programming for any of the quad core processors we use in our desktop computers. Ars Technica even claims that the design of the Xenon, similar to that of the P4 Northwood, is excellent for media streaming. link

Deep pipelining (in the Xenon) also allows a computer architect to increase the number of instructions that the processor can hold and simultaneously execute by stacking more instructions into the same amount of hardware. So a machine with deeper pipelines may have fewer execution units, but it can have more instructions in various stages of execution simultaneously. Thus the more deeply pipelined processor could theoretically be smaller than a comparable "wide and shallow" design while holding a greater number of instructions, because it does more with less.

The graphics shouldn't be a problem either since console games run at extremely low resolutions. GTA 4 on the PS3 was only 640P resolution. That works out to something like 1138x640? That's the same pixel ballpark as 1024x768, true? That's the resolution we used 10 years ago, so getting Crysis to run at that res should not be a problem.

 

[dguy6789]

Yeah, I've always thought the 360 cpu was the better of the two when it comes to actual usefulness and ease to program for. That said, they are still in order processors and much slower than out of order desktop pc processors for the tasks they have to do to run these games.

I don't doubt that the 360 and the PS3 can make the game look great and run great compared to the pc version if you just compare screenshots, but the problem is the actual games will be dumbed down to fit into the tiny amount of memory the consoles have. Smaller levels, more frequent loading, that sort of thing is going to happen. Crysis plants you on this big map and there's places you have to get to. You can get there however you want. Console shooters usually give you a relatively straight line between point A and point B.

You won't see a game look as good as Gears of War or Killzone 2 with maps the size of GTA4's world. Sacrifices have to be made to have wide open areas like that when your machine has very limited resources. Just look at Gears of War, Halo 3, and GTA 4. That's in order of best to worst looking game, smallest to largest areas of gameplay.

I'm betting the scope of the maps is going to be significantly more narrow with Crysis 2.(Because I expect them to be more likely to make a smaller game that looks very pretty than to make a much larger game that looks only decent)

 

[ShawnD1]

What about Fallout 3? That game had good graphics and it was an open world like Crysis.

 

[dguy6789]

Of course, good looking is a matter of opinion. Fallout 3 looks good, but I personally wouldn't quite call it Crysis good or as good looking as any Unreal Engine 3 title. It's also a lot easier to run than Crysis is. I still stand by my statement that they can't have a game like Crysis on the consoles without some kind of severe sacrifices being made to make it happen.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Anandtech had their own article regarding the terrible performance of both the PS3 and 360 CPU for games back before their launch. It was taken down for reasons I don't know.

It was taken down because everyone on the internet with the slightest bit of comprehension of the world outside x86 was laughing their asses off at Anand over how profoundly ignorant the article was.

The main point the article made was that a single core Athlon 64 would have been a significantly better processor than either the one in the 360 or the PS3.

An i7 is still no match for Cell for typical game based code in reality.

I'm well aware that the Cell can be a number crunching monster given the right code, but that doesn't happen to be the game code a processor typically runs as far as I know.

Actually, it is. Too many people are too used to the insanely poorly written PC code that games use on a normal basis. Console native devs are used to using assembly when necessary and will figure out how to maximize their code base. The big issue with Cell is extracting maximum levels of parallelism out of code at which point Cell is an absolute monster dealing with physics and if you use the right approach AI also. It isn't sort of close to a single core Athlon 64, it throttles an i7.

I know that they aren't. However, there's no way enough performance can be gained from being a single platform to program for that can close the performance gap between the 7800 and the GTX 285(roughly what is needed to run Crysis maxed out nicely, not even taking the 256MB of ram a PS3 has vs the 2GB of ram Crysis on the PC uses into account yet either).

It is precisely that approach that makes typical PC devs suck on consoles. That is why Guerilla makes Epic look like rank ameratures in the console market. If you try and brute force your way through things you aren't going to get close to comparable results, but there are certainly other ways.

GT4 has very good looking cars and extremely bland and simple everything else

Heh, ignore the cars and show me a PC with 32MB of RAM and a Voodoo1 class rasterizer that can produce results that good. Ignoring the good looking part of the game altogether, show me a PC with those specs that could even handle the ugly stuff 🙂

Crysis won't work like that because it is a gigantic expansive game that will be very difficult to put onto a machine with 256MB of ram.

Use Cell to tesselate geometry on the fly(Cell can write directly to VRAM) which isn't all that difficult to do, and use a much heavier compression method for textures then PCs normally do(again, use Cell to decompress a more complex scheme then PCs can use).

Crysis 2 going to consoles will probably be similar to that. I doubt they have the power even if fully utilized to replicate the gaming experience offered by Crysis 1 in full detail.

I don't think Crytek will be able to pull it off, but you can certainly get in the general range with huge environments and comparable details.

That said, they are still in order processors and much slower than out of order desktop pc processors for the tasks they have to do to run these games.

If you are dealing with very poorly written code, and OoO core will be faster. The fastest computer in the world right now runs Cell CPUs.

I still stand by my statement that they can't have a game like Crysis on the consoles without some kind of severe sacrifices being made to make it happen.

GT5, some already think it looks better then Crysis and its' bigger areas are even larger then Crysis'.