Crysis 2 Retail Benchmarked

[WMD]

just cause didn't look that good anyways! But crysis 1 on DX10 is pretty amazing compared to Crysis 2. Not saying crysis 2 doesn't look good... but just not as jaw dropping as crysis 1... one of the amazing feat of crysis was the water! You can even fly the helicopters!

Crysis in DX9 looks identical to DX10 when you use the same cvar config files. In fact you can the game to look better than DX10 very high by additional tweaking.

I mentioned Just cause 2 because the game does not support DX9/ xp just like BF3. Everyone is heaping praise on these 2 games for dropping older tech and so called moving forward. But in reality JC2 does not look any better than many other games out there running on DX9. The game is DX10 only for marketing purpose the underlying graphics engine is still optimized for PS3 hardware. BF3 will most likely be the same.

 

[finbarqs]

dunno But I guess someone can hack crysis dx10 to look like how it was original meant to be! A computer killer!

 

[railven]

COD4: Modern Warfare 1
360 = 8.46 M
PS3 = 5.64 M
Wii = 1.33 M
DS = 1.27 M
PC = 1.26 M

Ratio of console to PC sales = 13:1

Well that proved my point.

CoD4:MW good sales. MW2 gave the finger to the PC crowd (after building your success on their support) they removed Dedicated servers, reduce online maps to 16 players, removed third party mod support on private servers, required the need to connect to IW.net for ALL online modes, their sales hit the floor.

Black Ops only fixed a few of the things they broke.

Do consoles have dedicated servers?

Only console game to come to mind that had dedicated servers was Warhawk. No game on the 360 has dedicated servers. It's all P2P. Only thing dedicated servers do is stat tracking.

I would say it really started after 2005 when Xbox 360 arrived. It's not that consoles dictate the growth per say, it's rather they hold back growth of technology.

They never held back the growth of technology. Gaming became a big business and all the forefathers of gaming have either retired or moved on. We got the likes of Kotick who is essentially milking franchies for what they're worth.

And it all falls back to console users.
They accepted pay to play infastructures.
They accepted pay to use DLC.
They accepted P2P for online play.
They accepted inferior graphics (if you look at the list of games on consoles actually rendered in "HD" you'd be surprised it is probably less than 10%.)

In the end the industry saw that as a gold mine and jumped on it. Now we're left waiting for the next console cycle and historic developers like Crytek jump on the bandwagon.

Been a gamer for years. I always had my low rez stuff on consoles and the bleeding edge on the PC. Now I don't have bleeding edge

 

[railven]

Crysis in DX9 looks identical to DX10 when you use the same cvar config files. In fact you can the game to look better than DX10 very high by additional tweaking.

And you could still tweak those same CVAR's in DX10. However, no matter how much tweaking, you couldn't get the DX10 features to turn on in DX9. You'd need DX10 hardware. So, DX9 mode on DX9 hardware would never look as good as DX10 mode on DX10 hardware. The limitations of the APIs was the cause.

Now if you argue you can download mods to fix this, you're no longer talking DX9 to DX10. Now it's DX9+Mods versus DX10.

 

[WMD]

And you could still tweak those same CVAR's in DX10. However, no matter how much tweaking, you couldn't get the DX10 features to turn on in DX9. You'd need DX10 hardware. So, DX9 mode on DX9 hardware would never look as good as DX10 mode on DX10 hardware. The limitations of the APIs was the cause.

Now if you argue you can download mods to fix this, you're no longer talking DX9 to DX10. Now it's DX9+Mods versus DX10.

As I said before if the CVARs are the same DX10 looks identical to DX9. Why are you saying DX9 mode will never look as good? All the DX10 games I played, there are no graphic differences between the 2 modes or they are so negligible that you will never notice during game play.

What limitations are you talking about that DX10 fixed? If it is about performance, how many games ran faster in DX10 vs the other way round? Please show me a game where it looks significantly better in DX10 vs DX9. I would really love believe we made a giant leap in graphics technology as well.

 

[railven]

As I said before if the CVARs are the same DX10 looks identical to DX9. Why are you saying DX9 mode will never look as good? All the DX10 games I played, there are no graphic differences between the 2 modes or they are so negligible that you will never notice during game play.

What limitations are you talking about that DX10 fixed? If it is about performance, how many games ran faster in DX10 vs the other way round? Please show me a game where it looks significantly better in DX10 vs DX9. I would really love believe we made a giant leap in graphics technology as well.

That bold just ruined your whole arguement.

DX10 has API extensions that DX9 doesn't. You can't add them into DX9. You could make emulations that can run along side DX9 (ie mods) but in the end you are no longer comparing two stock APIs.

This is how DX9 has survived so long. DX11 has a built in DoF code. DX9 does not. DX9 doesn't even have AA built in. You'd have to look at how each API works and is implemented to realize you can't make DX9 look identical to DX10 and the same for DX10 to DX11. Devs have manually added in code to run along side DX9 to make it look better, such as DoF and AA.

Try not to misunderstand my counter point. I never said DX10 was leaps ahead of DX9.

EDIT: perfect example - Truform. ATI's Tessellation functions that barely anyone used. I could run tessellation on a DX8 game that supported Truform, doesn't mean DX8 supported Tessellation.

 

[WMD]

That bold just ruined your whole arguement.

DX10 has API extensions that DX9 doesn't. You can't add them into DX9. You could make emulations that can run along side DX9 (ie mods) but in the end you are no longer comparing two stock APIs.

EDIT: perfect example - Truform. ATI's Tessellation functions that barely anyone used. I could run tessellation on a DX8 game that supported Truform, doesn't mean DX8 supported Tessellation.

How does it ruin my argument? I am talking about how the visual differences are negligible then you go on talking about them using different extensions. Obviously the API extensions are different. I never said they were the same.

This is how DX9 has survived so long. DX11 has a built in DoF code. DX9 does not. DX9 doesn't even have AA built in. You'd have to look at how each API works and is implemented to realize you can't make DX9 look identical to DX10 and the same for DX10 to DX11. Devs have manually added in code to run along side DX9 to make it look better, such as DoF and AA.

First of all where did you read this? I understand DX11 has tessellation that DX10 does not. But what effects are possible under DX10 but not on DX9?

 

[finbarqs]

wow... i just realized that i was all getting hyped up for crysis 2 when his suit kept getting upgraded by those stupid alien nano organisms, but in the end, they did shit! I was still the same alcatraz since the beginning!

 

[RussianSensation]

Well that proved my point.

CoD4:MW good sales.

It did sell well as a blockbuster videogame. Yet, COD4 sold 13 times more copies of the game on consoles than it did on the PC. :sneaky: My point still stands that cross-platform game sales on consoles FAR exceed PC game sales. Until this changes, I don't see developers spending any extra $ to improve graphics for PC games.

No game on the 360 has dedicated servers. It's all P2P. Only thing dedicated servers do is stat tracking.

Exactly. Which means PC gamers can't have excuses that because MW didn't have dedicated servers the game didn't sell well. The real reasons are that here are far too few PC gamers who are willing to pay $50 for a game and the install base of PC gamers is far smaller than it is for console gamers. This is why it's far more profitable to develop games for consoles.

They never held back the growth of technology.

I don't know what to tell you. If you think consoles haven't held back the growth of graphics, then why are most games developed in the last 2-3 years don't look much better than they do on consoles?

And it all falls back to console users.
They accepted pay to play infastructures.
They accepted pay to use DLC.
They accepted P2P for online play.
They accepted inferior graphics (if you look at the list of games on consoles actually rendered in "HD" you'd be surprised it is probably less than 10%.)

All of these points are irrelevant. The main point is more games are sold on consoles than on the PC. This makes consoles the most important platform(s) for developing new games, not the PC. End of story. This is why Crysis 2 didn't blow your mind in terms of graphics because Crytek doesn't give a d**mn about 300k copies sold on the PC. Those sales are immaterial to them. Crysis 1's main purpose was to get them brand recognition so that they could finally sell their game on consoles (and subsequently make real $$$).

Now we're left waiting for the next console cycle and historic developers like Crytek jump on the bandwagon.

Can you blame them? If you could sell 13-20x as many games on another platform, you'd ditch the PC in a heartbeat. At the very least, you'd treat the PC platform as a 2nd-tier, which is exactly what's been happening.

Been a gamer for years. I always had my low rez stuff on consoles and the bleeding edge on the PC. Now I don't have bleeding edge

I feel your pain, believe me. I would love nothing more than for PC games to be revolutionary and cutting edge. The problem is PC sales are shrinking.

 

[GaiaHunter]

I feel your pain, believe me. I would love nothing more than for PC games to be revolutionary and cutting edge. The problem is PC sales are shrinking.

80.5 million PCs in a quarter is twice as many xbox360 are out there.

The problem is that only a fraction of those PCs will be able to handle games, especially at the more demanding (compared to consoles) PC settings - and those that will, will on average be much more expensive than consoles.

On average the consoles, even though the current console generation is 5 or 6 years old, are a more powerful gaming platform than the average PC (the average PC has a crappy Intel IGP).

 

[Skurge]

snip.

There is a problem I have with those PC sales. You can't compare the sales of a game like MW2 that has steamworks built in to a game like BC2 and say it has poor sales.

I can tell you that Almost everyone I know who owns COD4 in PC has the retail version in contrast almost everyone I know who owns MW2 got it from steam.

Before you showed stats of BC2 making something like 600k retail sales on PC when in reality it was 2.6million. Thats 2million players who got their games from places other retail. Thats more than 3x times the retail sales. Which is the only thing those sites show. MW2 was on Steams top 10 for months, even after BC2 came out and you still want to tell me that they only sold 700k? I seriously doubt that. Since MW2 is a steamworks game I can say an order of magnitude more copies were sold from steam than retail.

Im willing to bet you BF3 if it doesnt turn to be a poor port will sell the same number of copies on the PC, 360 and PS3. No combining numbers.

I remeber a chart showing console sales getting lower, PC retail sales getting lower, but DD sales went up.

 

[Arkadrel]

Im willing to bet you BF3 if it doesnt turn to be a poor port will sell the same number of copies on the PC, 360 and PS3. No combining numbers.

I think, it might even sell more on pc

why? its seems to be the only game out there atm, thats pushing graphics.
All those guys that bought sick new GPUs will want something to test them on.

 

[railven]

How does it ruin my argument? I am talking about how the visual differences are negligible then you go on talking about them using different extensions. Obviously the API extensions are different. I never said they were the same.

Because you said identical. You can argue semantics, but I just posted that it isn't identical. Different hardware handles different extensions. Crysis 1 and 2 have nVidia hardware CVARS, just because I turn them on doesn't mean they'll display on my ATI hardware. Placebo Effect would kick in.

First of all where did you read this? I understand DX11 has tessellation that DX10 does not. But what effects are possible under DX10 but not on DX9?

Because that is how they are adding features to DX9 games (look up IW's extensive work on DoF that was used in CoD:MW). It isn't my job to educate you on how the APIs are different, if you don't know that they are different and some do things others don't, you shouldn't be having this debate.

 

[railven]

It did sell well as a blockbuster videogame. Yet, COD4 sold 13 times more copies of the game on consoles than it did on the PC. :sneaky: My point still stands that cross-platform game sales on consoles FAR exceed PC game sales. Until this changes, I don't see developers spending any extra $ to improve graphics for PC games.

Really? So Rocksteady didn't give PC gamers PhysX support? Some developers actual add the extra resources to make their games at least a little better on the PC. Some don't.

The point of the argument here is that Crytek didn't do anything. A company that is known to push PC boundaries didn't add a single thing to their PC counterpart. Sure, we're getting a patch, now, but it was denied by Crytek themselves and now it's back in the pipeline.

I guess even they realized they gaffed.

Exactly. Which means PC gamers can't have excuses that because MW didn't have dedicated servers the game didn't sell well. The real reasons are that here are far too few PC gamers who are willing to pay $50 for a game and the install base of PC gamers is far smaller than it is for console gamers. This is why it's far more profitable to develop games for consoles.

Are you seriously acting like the removal of a key feature from a genre isn't going to impact the intended audience?

Okay, they also removed:
Console Commands
Lean
Mod Support
Custom Tags

YOu know, features that made CoD successful. Features found in CoD4 :MW1. The reasoning for removing them was to make the game more streamline with the console version. Damn, they took step backwards with MW2.

I don't know what to tell you. If you think consoles haven't held back the growth of graphics, then why are most games developed in the last 2-3 years don't look much better than they do on consoles?

You're right, because Consoles and PC games existed only in the last 2-3 years. Maybe I should have worded my response better - until recently, consoles never dictated technology growth.

All of these points are irrelevant. The main point is more games are sold on consoles than on the PC. This makes consoles the most important platform(s) for developing new games, not the PC. End of story. This is why Crysis 2 didn't blow your mind in terms of graphics because Crytek doesn't give a d**mn about 300k copies sold on the PC. Those sales are immaterial to them. Crysis 1's main purpose was to get them brand recognition so that they could finally sell their game on consoles (and subsequently make real $$$).

And they are sells out for that. End of story.

Can you blame them? If you could sell 13-20x as many games on another platform, you'd ditch the PC in a heartbeat. At the very least, you'd treat the PC platform as a 2nd-tier, which is exactly what's been happening.

Yes, I can. Them making the PC version better doesn't affect the console version. How does it? It would have been the ultimate "look at how good our engine scales." It would have been a marketing bullet point. Instead this "OMG it scales beautifully" engine is nothing very spectacular. The engine doesn't seem to scale, just the resolution.

Did you even follow the development of the CryEngine 3?

I feel your pain, believe me. I would love nothing more than for PC games to be revolutionary and cutting edge. The problem is PC sales are shrinking.

I guess console sales are shrinking too, damn guess it's the end of gaming.

 

[railven]

I remeber a chart showing console sales getting lower, PC retail sales getting lower, but DD sales went up.

Someone should tell the world there is no money in PC gaming to be made. I mean, the following things have happened:

Best Buy looks into opening their own Digital Download store.
Gamestop buys Impulse to improve their Digital Download store.
ECA mobilizes to prevent taxes on Digital Downloads.
NPD works to improve their online sales stat tracking.
Duke Nukem went Steamworks (I didn't know that myself haha.)

I can keep going. Seems this often ignored area of sales is finally getting some attention. Hell, THQ said they were getting 66% of their PC sales through digital sales. Don't even forget all the indie devs who only do digital sales (Minecraft anyone?)

 

[RussianSensation]

I never said you don't make $ on the PC. I clearly stated that developers make a lot more $ by making videogames on consoles. Even if you counted digital sales for the PC, the sales of cross-platform games on consoles are multiples of times more. Even if BF:BC2 or MW2 sold 1/3 the number of copies on the PC, you guys assume that the additional expenses towards graphics would have a significant increase in the sales numbers for those games. I have already shown that BF:BC2 has sold well despite looking almost exactly the same on the PC as it does on consoles.

What if the incremental number of units sold due to better graphics wouldn't necessarily be large enough to warrant the investment costs? We can't just assume that if a developer spends millions of dollars to improve graphics further that the game's additional sales due to better graphics will offset the investment costs. I am confident that Crytek's team has considered this cost/benefit analysis and estimated that the additional investment on the PC was not going to be worth it. It was a financial decision. To say that they "sold out" is not understanding how a business is run in America. A business is there to make $ for shareholders, not to appease to a handful of gamers with GTX590s.

Just 5 minutes of Googling reveals just how expensive it is to develop blockbuster videogames.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/18/business/fi-ct-duty18

"Call of Duty [Black Ops] cost $40 million to $50 million to produce, people close to the project said, about as much as a mid-size film. Including marketing expenses and the cost of producing and distributing discs, the launch budget was $200 million, on par with a summer popcorn movie -- and extremely high for a video game." - LA Times

Black Ops does not even have a next generation game engine. So imagine investing even more millions of dollars into Crysis 2? Crysis 2 isn't going to sell as well as Black Ops no matter how much you improved its graphics. So there is no business case.

 

[railven]

I never said you don't make $ on the PC. I clearly stated that developers make a lot more $ by making videogames on consoles. Even if you counted digital sales for the PC, the sales of cross-platform games on consoles are multiples of times more. Even if BF:BC2 or MW2 sold 1/3 the number of copies on the PC, you guys assume that the additional expenses towards graphics would have a significant increase in the sales numbers for those games on the PC. What if the incremental number of units sold due to better graphics wouldn't necessarily be large enough to warrant the investment costs? You can't just assume that if you spend millions of dollars to improve graphics further that the game's additional sales due to better graphics will offset the investment costs. I am confident that Crytek's team has considered this cost/benefit analysis and estimated that the additional investment on the PC was not going to be worth it. It was a financial decision. To say that they "sold out" is not understanding how a business is run in America. A business is there to make $ for shareholders, not to appease to a handful of gamers with GTX590s.

And you can't conclude the opposite. The simple fact that Crysis 1 sold well because of its graphical prowess counters your whole argument.

PC gamers a different breed than console gamers. We like the eye candy. We argue about which videocards would give us the better eye candy. To even think that a developer not adding extra frills to their game wouldn't warrant our attention is narrow minded.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that PC games outsell or come close to console games. But we're arguing the bleak position you place PC gaming using sources that are known to A) be inaccurate and B) don't track digital downloads.

Crytek, who isn't American so not sure what that has to do with it, is in the business to sell their game and this time around made it very vocal they wanted to lease their engine. Scaling was a big argument. They did countless tech demos showcasing how you can code on the PC and scale to the consoles - and vice versa. It turns out the engine doesn't scale. The PC community got a direct port with absolutely nothing setting it apart (again this ties to once venerable PC devs giving the PC community the finger.) YOu argue it was cost saving with only sales to back it up. Do you take into account that all console sales are retail (cut into profits), all console sales have to pay for console licensing fees (last I read it was $20 for Microsoft and $25 for Sony, not sure where Nintendo stands), they also have to pay packing (Crysis 2 for PS3 uses blu-ray which is still 3x the cost of standard DVD per blank), and in the end we'd only sit here and guess the profit difference between digital sales and physical (which include other overheads).

They went for money, plain and simple. They sold out.

 

[railven]

Just 5 minutes of Googling reveals just how expensive it is to develop blockbuster videogames.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/18/business/fi-ct-duty18

"Call of Duty [Black Ops] cost $40 million to $50 million to produce, people close to the project said, about as much as a mid-size film. Including marketing expenses and the cost of producing and distributing discs, the launch budget was $200 million, on par with a summer popcorn movie -- and extremely high for a video game." - LA Times

Black Ops does not even have a next generation game engine. So imagine investing even more millions of dollars into Crysis 2? Crysis 2 isn't going to sell as well as Black Ops no matter how much you improved its graphics. So there is no business case.

And to your edit:

Not sure about you but Crysis doesn't have this Hollywood caliber voice acting cast does it?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632479/

Gary Oldman for crying out loud. Gary effin-A Oldman!

Crysis 2:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1684551/

These people don't even have freaking profile pics.

So you try to use cost of marketing (which Activision is known to spend a ton on), distribution of discs (again physical media cost money) as your argument? Clearly Activision wants to milk CoD and they spend more money on promoting it than they did making it (look up all the glitches the game is littered with. I don't even think they've fixed all the online issues.)

 

[RussianSensation]

They went for money, plain and simple. They sold out.

I guess making videogames should be a charitable business.

You should start your own videogame development house. Design the next generation DX11 game that can only run on GTX590s in SLI at 1024x768. It would be so next generation, the engine would be upgraded with patches to DX12 and DX13 over the next 5 years. You would distribute the DLC and patches for this game for free over the next 5 years as well. This would be the most cutting edge videogame on the PC for at least 5 years. I don't doubt that you will make a lot of $ since no one else has tried this business model. Even if you don't, the emotional satisfaction of making PC gamers happy by delivering the best graphics in the industry should be sufficient enough

As a PC gamer I am disappointed that Crysis 2 doesn't look better than Crysis 1, but as a business person I am willing to understand the developer's point of view also.

 

[railven]

I guess making videogames should be a charitable business.

You should start your own videogame development house. Design the next generation DX11 game that can only run on GTX590s in SLI at 1024x768. It would be so next generation, the engine would be upgraded with patches to DX12 and DX13 over the next 5 years. The DLC for these patches you would distribute for free also. This would be the most cutting edge videogame on the PC for 5 years. I don't doubt that you will make a lot of $. Even if you don't, the emotional satisfaction of making PC gamers happy due to the best graphics in the industry should be sufficient enough

And you ran out of arguments. Can't win the debate, attack the opponent. Nice work

 

[Skurge]

Russian, The thing about CryTEK is that their were blabbing about how easy it is for their engine to scale up and down. How easy it would be to make a cutting edge game and scale it doen to consoles and lowend PCs. IF it was so easy, why doesnt the game look anything like the tech demos? Its all BS.

I also have to congradulate you on finding the worst screenshots possible for BC2. How much do you think it cost Bioware to add the high res texture pack to DA2? I can bet you its a tiny amount compared to the total cost, and it was a small price to pay for the mindhshare their amongst PC gamers. If BC2 made $100million. $33million would be from PCs alone. Do you think it cost $33 million to add DX11 or HBAO or higher res textures or dedicated servers to their engine? Do you think it would cost them that much to add all the features they are adding to FB2 including the larger maps?

I don't think so. BF3 will be different because its a new engine, BC2 used the same engine that was developed for consoles in BC1 and they still managed to make it look noticably better. I know, cause I've seen both running, not just videos. All the gameplay videos for Crysis 2 were done on Xbox, so far all the gameplay videos for BF3 were done a PC with a GTX580. We might get 580 performace for $200 dollers by the time the game is out, so that talk of GTX590 required to play a cutting edge game is nonsense.

I mean the PC version has 64 player maps vs 24 for consoles. Just by doing that I can tell you DICE just made a few hundred thousand sales. Mine and my brothers included. So I think blaiming cost is nonsense. It doesnt cost them 50million dollers to upgrade an engine, but they could stand to make 1 or 2 million more sales. You have to spend money to make money.

 

[notty22]

People are buying in to BF3 advertising campaign exactly similar to what Crysis 2 promised. They know their ads were being released at the same time as Crysis2 launch,and geared the hype to the pc gamer wish list. I hope they deliver, but the game isn't here yet.

I'm still giving Crysis 2 dx11 update some hope, I only have to look to F1 dx11 update to see a game , 'made better' with a update.

 

[Makaveli]

And you ran out of arguments. Can't win the debate, attack the opponent. Nice work

It has nothing to do with a personal attack he just understands how the world works better than you.

 

[Grooveriding]

Latest full BF3 trailer is out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zw8SmsovJc&feature=player_embedded

Regardless of what BF3 is or is not, this trailer puts Cryport 2 to shame. :thumbsup:

 

[happy medium]

Latest full BF3 trailer is out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zw8SmsovJc&feature=player_embedded

Regardless of what BF3 is or is not, this trailer puts Cryport 2 to shame. :thumbsup:

That looks like "game of the year" to me, easy!:thumbsup: