CRYTEK AND EA BRING CRYSIS TO XBOX LIVE AND PLAYSTATION NETWORK
Guildford, UK. – September 9, 2011 – Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and award-winning developer, Crytek GmbH, announced today that the critically-acclaimed Crysis® franchise will debut a new experience on Xbox LIVE® and PlayStation® Network. In October 2011, shooter fans will be able to download a modified and enhanced version of the award-winning single-player campaign from the original Crysis, remastered for console players using Crytek’s state-of-the-art CryENGINE®3 with all new lighting, effects and other visual optimizations. For just £15.99 SRP or 1600 Microsoft Points, gamers will download the most robust and exciting Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network game to date.
In 2007 and again in 2011, critics around the world hailed Crysis and Crysis 2 as titles that ushered in the next-generation of gaming with jaw-dropping visuals, industry leading technology and groundbreaking sandbox gameplay, featuring the super-powerful Nanosuit. Today, the original, award-winning 2007 single-player campaign has been remastered for Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network with optimized Nanosuit controls, fine-tuned combat and full stereoscopic 3D support.
l. Most of the work was done at Crytek UK in Nottingham and we are very happy in how it turned out.
How did we manage to get that tech working on consoles, what sort of sacrifices were required?
Firstly we had to reduce the memory used by the assets in the game. We used smart algorithms to compress the used meshes for our geometry, the terrain height maps and terrain textures, the sprites that are used to display our vegetation in the distance and the animations used for our characters.We also optimized how the memory was used and organized in our engine, which allowed us to increase the Streaming Buffer, which was very essential for making our large levels work.
Many of the effects now showcased in games are done via fullscreen shader passes. For example to convey motion blur, the render information of the whole screen is being processed with algorithms creating the desired effect. We already improved those algorithms in Crysis 2, but further optimized this for the Crysis 1 console version in order to save performance and processing time.We refined the Occlusion Buffer we use to detect which objects we do not need to render since they would be occluded from other objects that are in front of them and used Reprojection methods to predict where the player might look next in order to avoid objects popping suddenly into place.
We also optimized our vegetation a lot. We reduced some of the poly counts and adjusted the used methods for blending the vegetation into each other and making it fade out on the edges. We also optimized many of our objects and vehicles in the game, tried to reduce the amount of textures and polygons to increase the performance where possible.
Of course we also had to optimize our levels as well. With more careful placement of the objects and the vegetation in the game, we were able to reduce the overall rendering time needed. We also looked at our AI counts and scripting, to prevent large amount of AI being active the player could actually not engage.
Well, it's a PC exclusive no longer. Crytek and EA have announced a coming downloadable version of Crysis for Xbox 360 and PS3, which will use the updated CryEngine 3 that powered this year's Crysis 2. Earlier this week I had a chance to play it on Xbox 360, and I was so impressed that one of my first questions was, somewhat unbelievably: "Is this being ported to PC?"
This looks really nice for but they're removing some of the complexity from the original game to feel more like Crysis 2. I don't get it.
You know that thing that happens sometimes (most recently with the Fallout: New Vegas "Gun Runners Arsenal" DLC) when a company fails to have their achievement list updated? Well, it's happened today, but this time with an entire game. The digital Games on Demand release of Crysis went off without a hitch this morning (feel free to download it for 1600MSP from here if you'd like - price may vary by region). However, its achievements have not been posted to xbox.com, which means you can't unlock them properly. They'll still show as unlocking in the game, but your Gamerscore will not increase. I can only ever remember this happening once before with the arcade title Crystal Defenders, and that one took a week to update. Hopefully this will be sooner.
Once they are posted to xbox.com, you still won't get credit for anything you unlocked previously until you recover your Gamertag and redo the requirements, so it may be in your interest to hold off for the time being and wait for this issue to be sorted out. Watch the "Lastest Achievements" feed for the list when it is available. If I can't post the achievements right away (I need to be at home to do so, but I am working for ten hours today), I will at the very least update this article.
We've just received word direct from Crytek UK that the issue with the Xbox 360 achievements for Crysis has now been resolved and is currently in the process of being rolled out across Xbox Live.
The inferior PC version is $7.50 on Steam today. :smug
The inferior PC version is $7.50 on Steam today. :smug
The inferior PC version is $7.50 on Steam today. :smug
Can u afford it?
In a form of total control over their product, Microsoft and EA have made it a requirement that when playing the recently released Crysis you have to be connected to the Xbox Live service.
If you are happily playing Crysis and Xbox Live goes down, or you have problems with your network, you're given 10 minutes (which counts down sending you messages at 1 minute intervals) to restore your connection. Failure to do so results in being given no choice but to go back to the Xbox dashboard. If you're wanting to boot up the game and you're offline, the game won't even launch.
So if you're wanting to play Crysis offline with the same profile that downloaded it and paid the price, you can't. Other games such as Resident Evil 4 HD which also released recently do allow you to play offline, so why not with Crysis? This is a shame and perhaps something to combat gamers sharing data across multiple profiles, but in the end this is rather limiting if you've paid for something which can then only be used under strict conditions. Not really a good advocate for digital downloads.
We're not even going to ask Microsoft to comment on this because we already can anticipate their lack of response.
It's been proven that this will only occur if you re-download games on other consoles. As long as you play on the console that originally downloaded the game you can play in offline mode.