Hmm, Sins of a Solar Empire didn't have any problems selling well. Maybe it hasn't something to do with this game design thing I've heard people talking about.

I love how bad game designers blame PC piracy for their dismal sales. Don't get me wrong; Crysis was "technically" amazing. However, the underlying game design sucked IMO. It was a brilliant tech demo, but a bad game nevertheless.

Its old news to develop technology for future machines that haven't super saturated the market. That's a huge mistake...

As far as design, I couldnt even play Crysis, even on my spanking brand new Vista run machine....

How can you expect good sales when you only cater to the small percentage with top end systems? Word got out pretty quickly that those with "ordinary" systems wouldn't be able to play the game unless almost everything was turned off. Why should anyone plunk down $50 for a game that won't play on their system?

There are a lot of PC only games that sell well, so don't blame it on piracy.

"There are a lot of PC only games that sell well, so don't blame it on piracy. "

Are there?

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17129

ONE game cleared a million in 2007. COD4 was good, right? Yet it sold under 400k on PC. Even Infinity Ward has commented on how huge COD4 is on torrent sites.

I'm a PC game but I think they're making the right move. It's just not profitable to make PC games anymore.

No one is saying that piracy doesn't affect PC gaming, but, as noted in the previous comments, there were much bigger problems with Crysis (e.g. design and system requirements) that led to disappointing sales.

I think systems like Steam and other online distribution platforms will help to alleviate the piracy problems if that's the case...

but, I also agree with the fact that Crysis was targeted to players with uber PCs, and I personally am a PC gamer primarily, and knowing my mid-range couldn't handle it very well, I haven't played this game, on the other hand COD4 was exceptionally well built and it ran on max with no problem, so are source games and Unreal games, so I think the technology also played a part in Crysis' low sales

The high specs were the sole reason I didn't buy this game, I was eager and ready to snap it up otherwise. I knew it would be a dissapointing experience.

As I've learned from experience, next years PC will probably cut it so I'll leave it till then. And as for my friends, they gave up on PC gaming due to hardware costs of keeping up. When I play with my mates, it's on consoles now. Less hassel too.

I am from Brazil, here all games get pirated to a skyrocketing amount, but still, the games that here are the TOP 5 on piracy dealers, are also the games TOP 5 on stores, here one of the most pirated games is Warcraft III, and it is also one of the most legally sold games...

What there are to make Warcraft III, a old title, to sell so well in both markets? The fact that the game is hard to NOT run, you can run the game anywhere...

Crysis: Here Crysis sold more legally than ilegally, why is that? Because people that buy games ilegally are usually poor people, and poor people can not even think of running Crysis...

Btw: I made a survey on the university asking what games a person played (remembering that a national survey said that only 1% of our population is on university, and that this is the same 1% richest population on the country), results:

Warcraft III: 50 players, 40 regular players, 29 legal owners...
Unreal 2004: 34 players, 22 legal owners
Unreal 3, Crysis and Bioshock: All three games I found below 10 players, Crysis being the worst one, with a 3 persons that bought the game, 2 original copies and 1 illegal download copy...

Also another intersting note: The 3 Crysis owners said that the game suck... And the 2 that bought the game legally got so upset of spending money on a stupid game that they now got pirated copies of the other games instead of original copies (other games: Bioshock and U3)

I have been out of PC gaming for a while now so I don't have a very clear picture of the market. However, for many years now i've thought about the PC gaming market and wondered if remarkable sales are even common anymore because I knew pirates have been running wild on the market for years. Piracy is also the biggest reason I suspect Epic Games somewhat moving away from the PC for.

Now I do acknowledge the fact that the game wasn't practical for its time in terms of widespread consumption. Many people simply didn't have the technology to properly run the game. I sure didn't and I still don't.

But ultimately, I can't help but suspect piracy the most.

I didn't see anyone else mentioning this, so here goes: the reason I didn't buy this game, even though it would run fine (at lower settings) on my non-Vista hobbled computer - with an year or two old graphics card - isn't any of these reasons. It's the PLOT. Let me get this straight - I'm a soldier fighting other soldiers in another country and then aliens show up and I have to fight them In case you were wondering, the BUZZing is the done-to-death-try-again-******* buzzer going off. Spoiler alert!: there's a really, really big alien that you have to kill to end the game - or maybe a giant brain or a ginormous power source with multiple little glowing things that have to be shot to lower its shield!!! Just kidding, I can't see myself playing to the end of a game like this to find out what happens, still I'm sure it's close to what I'm guessing.
The problem here is all anyone cares about is graphics. IGN gave this game a 9.4! How many points is plot worth? Zero I guess. Who cares how pretty the game is if I always have to be a Marine. Or a space Marine. Or a WWII Marine. How come no main character is ever in the Navy or the Air Force? Game companies are making the same game over and over and over with slightly better graphics - that you need TWO $400 graphics cards working together to see!
Why is PC gaming not doing so well? Because game developers keep developing WWII shooters dumbed down so they can also be on consoles. No PC exclusives = no innovation.
Anyway, when I first read a plot summary for Crysis I thought it was a joke. I couldn't imagine anything so overdone and uninspired was meant to be taken seriously. Crytek evidently thought graphics were the only thing that was important in a game. I guess the joke's on them! :)
Game developers take note.

I guess many people downloaded that game did not had the intension to play it till the end, but only to take a look at the graphics, to see what's possible these days.
For that kind of personal tech demo you do not want to pay the 40€. Instead you pay the price for a game like CoD4 with a thrilling gameplay or a very long lasting game like Total War (Medieval).

I actually thought Crysis had a ton of fun gameplay moments.

The problem wasn't just piracy or the system requirements. Neither of those will totally sink a game on its own. But mixed together, they are deadly. You end up with a situation where the only people who can run your games are the super-hardcore game freaks who are almost certain to pirate it.

Crysis rocked !

Definately one of the best FPS games out there.

It was worth every penny, and I will be playing it for sometime to come.

I buy FPS games like they are candy, I support my industry.

Did any of these people who are complaining about Crysis ever play the demo ? I played the demo about a dozen times before buying the game. The environments are immense, the battle is intense and this game makes HALO look like a bad joke. If your system is not good enough then build a better one.

As far as piracy goes...well...personal computer games have ALWAYS suffered from piracy as far back as the 70's. There really is no way around it.

Where there is a will to steal, there is a way.

Tynan was correct about some hardcore gamers who know how to pirate and do so without hesitation also being the exact target audience for Crysis.

Whereas games like Sins of a Solar Empire are targeted for older more mature law abiding audiences. Look at Galactic Civilizations, that game had no copy protection at all, but wasn't pirated because it is for an older audience as well. It's turn based... what pirate would ever lower themselves to steal an un-copyprotected turn based game ? ;)

So technology doesn't always equal success, that's why you need to do the math of marketing. To detemermine the amount of work needed for a title and the expected sales figures of said title. Frankly, Crytek's reaction is rather surprising. I mean Crysis was not tied into any kind of online protection scheme, it had no extremely revolutionary game mechanics like Half Life 2 or Bioshock. And it's action is targeting a much younger ( and poor ) audience. If they could have made this game for a lot less money, it would have made sense as an investment. But if you're going to spend 5 years making a game for the PC, you had better be targeting a larger more mature audience with a lot more leeway as to hardware requirements. Look at World of Warcraft, that game runs on almost anything, and yet they only make over a billion dollars a year ; )

Yes, I've played the demo and a portion of the full game. It ran fine , it was just the same old plot. I really wanted to like it, some of the special powers were neat. I'm just sick of being "Army Guy" fighting aliens. Isn't everyone else sick of that too?