Dev also wants to avoid Crysis 'most pirated PC game of the year' repeat
The introduction of an anti-used game measure for next-gen consoles would be "absolutely awesome," says Crysis dev Crytek.Released in March 2011, Crysis 2 racked up three million sales within four months, according to EA. It was an impressive sales total in the most competitive of genres, and more than enough to ensure the publisher was keen to partner with the German developer again on 2013's Crysis 3, but it could have been much higher, and the two companies would have received a great deal more revenue, were it not for second-hand game sales and piracy.
Last week we asked Rasmus Hojengaard, Crytek's director of creative development, what the studio would like to see when the platform holders launch the next round of consoles.
"The worst thing that can happen is they make something that's very complex for developers, regardless of how awesome it might theoretically be," he said. "So getting hardware that allows you to quickly get prototypes up and running, and any kind of scalability they can offer will be great as well, as long as everyone has that scalability and not just a select few."
Asked if he'd like to see Microsoft and Sony introduce anti-used game measures, as has been rumoured for Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4, Hojengaard added:
"From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome. It's weird that [second-hand] is still allowed because it doesn't work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well."
Boosting sales on PC is arguably an even greater priority, given that Crysis 2 was named the most pirated game of 2011, with the PC version alone illegally downloaded somewhere in the region of four million times.
"It's very flattering and upsetting at the same time," Hojengaard said of the situation. "Obviously you miss so much revenue, it's so clear that a lot of people want to play your game but they don't really want to pay for it, which is unfortunately really disappointing.
"It's also a little flattering because people are willing to bother download these 10GB files or whatever the game takes because they think it looks great. We obviously want to avoid that this time, but even if we can convert 25 percent of those gamers into paying customers [you have an extra million sales]."
How do you go about doing that? "You'd have to ask someone who knows something about that, because it's not me," the Crytek man said.
We'll have more from our interview with Hojengaard later this week. In the meantime, check out Crysis 3's newly released gameplay trailer, plus our recently published Crysis 3 preview, in which our man Ben Griffin called the FPS "a contender for best-looking game of all time".
Source: Computerandvideogames
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