Crysis and sales...

[oNyx]

[...]I believe they fixed this particular 'feature' in Q3 onwards [...]

Toggling was also possible in Q3.

set w1 "weapon 1;set ws vstr w2"
set w2 "weapon 2;set ws vstr w1"
set ws "vstr w1"
bind x "vstr ws"

Something like that iirc (usually one would add resets to other weapon switches in order to get deterministic behavior). Well, it has been a while, but I wrote some massive scripts back then.

[cylab]

I'm more attracted to slower paced FPSs now, that's why I found Crysis appealing - much more so than Unreal 3.

After I finished Crysis I gave Stalker another try, which never attracted me too much (actually I started it multiple times and lost interest). But now after forcing myself through the first two or so hours, the addiction came kicking in. So if you haven't tried it yet, give it a shot.

[jojoh]

Halo sold extremely well as soon as it was released. It was *the* game at the time. MS and Bungie did an excellent job hyping it.

Crysis's real problem is it's a PC game. PC games are rapidly becoming niche. It's no wonder most developers now write their games with ports to 360/PS3 in mind. Or just go straight to the consoles and skip the PC step altogether.

I agree, but I think pc games have always been a niche relative to console games, they're about a tenth as big in terms of sales. We discussed it in this thread:
http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=15300.msg122012#msg122012

Well we were comparing a PC game with a 360 game (Halo 3 is only available for 360 as far as I know), so that means that it is one niche against another niche. 360 game sales might be bigger, don't know, but it is not that much bigger.

Industry Background
According to NPD Group, Inc., a market research firm, the electronic game industry was an approximately
$11.5 billion market in the United States in 2005. Of this $11.5 billion market, approximately $10.5 billion was
attributable to video game products, excluding sales of used video game products, and approximately $1.0 billion
was attributable to PC entertainment software.

But the above 'video game products' probably includes the console hardware...

Yup, that includes hardware. Games stood for $7.4 billion, so that would give PC games almost 14% of all game sales. Madden was the top selling game I think for that period for platforms: 360,Wii,PS3,PSP,NDS, XBX,PS2,GCN,GBA (9 platforms). Each platform would on average get (100-14)/9=9.6% (brutally simplified)
So the niche idea doesn't really make sense to me (since PC then would be one of the bigger niches ).

I am quite sure that the high HW requirements in combo with the idea that the cool thing with crysis is that it looks great when all bells are turned makes it sell so badly. A new games should be possible to enjoy on a 3-4y old rig and make use of current and next year or so hardware. I get the feeling that I could possibly play it on my rig, but not at all enjoy it, so I will not play it. This might be wrong since it could be great to play even without gfx set to max, so maybe the hype about the gfx has made crysis a bad favor.

Also Halo is a franchise and Halo 3 is almost a "must have" on 360 whereas crysis is just a purdy lookin fps in a long line of fps's for PC, so even though the numbers are quite different, I don't think it is all that surprising.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[darkprophet]

This might be pointless to some, but for a few will get what I mean (I hope!)

The innovation of the car didn't happen over night. Yes, there was the initial change of paradigm: the invention of the combustion engine. But after that, a lot of little addons made what the car what it is today. If you look at cars of today, the inner workings might be the same, but can a 1901 car really out perform a 2001 car? I think not...

This is true for *any* innovation, from cars to medicine to architecture to software programming (just look at Fortran). Same goes for FPS shooters, Doom was the change in paradigm, then alot of innovation happened quite quickly to make what FPS what they are today...

There has been alot of innovation in any genre you look at, mainly being driven by the market. If the market isn't asking for anything new, it wont get it...

DP

[cylab]

I am quite sure that the high HW requirements in combo with the idea that the cool thing with crysis is that it looks great when all bells are turned makes it sell so badly. A new games should be possible to enjoy on a 3-4y old rig and make use of current and next year or so hardware. I get the feeling that I could possibly play it on my rig, but not at all enjoy it, so I will not play it. This might be wrong since it could be great to play even without gfx set to max, so maybe the hype about the gfx has made crysis a bad favor.

Exactly what I think. Crysis is a good to excellent game for the gameplay itself, but all the gfx hype provoked wrong expectations. A friend of mine said once "I heard it looks hardly better than far cry on minimum settings, so it's not worth playing on my rig"...

[erikd]

I'm tired of people claiming that theres no innovation in games any more, or that PC gaming is dying and holding up a few specific examples as if they're indicative of the whole industry. People have been saying this for years and it's just not true. Games are more varied and better than ever, damnit.

Sure there have been some innovations to proven genres, but when was the last time a successful *new* genre surfaced?
Was it when MMORPGs came around?

[Abuse]

After I finished Crysis I gave Stalker another try, which never attracted me too much (actually I started it multiple times and lost interest). But know after forcing myself through the first two or so hours, the addiction came kicking in. So if you haven't tried it yet, give it a shot.

Just went out and bought it - looks good so far, though I see what you mean about it being abit slow to get going.

[tortoise]

Sure there have been some innovations to proven genres, but when was the last time a successful *new* genre surfaced?
Was it when MMORPGs came around?

Music games are probably the newest genre. They firmly became a solid genre in Japan in the mid nineties, and now in America they are becoming solid here too.

[cylab]

Just went out and bought it - looks good so far, though I see what you mean about it being abit slow to get going.

Hope you installed the latest patch. If not do it asap, since it corrects some gameplay bugs BUT will render your savegames useless!!!

[darkprophet]

1 thing about stalker....loading times! Life is just too short...

DP

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[cylab]

1 thing about stalker....loading times! Life is just too short...

Yes, it's a shame that RAM-Discs aren't practical anymore... And if you aren't a fan of long walks, you should take a look at the Transport Mod (http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Transport_Mod;77758)