@Powertrade, I've always been curious why Crysis is forecasted to sell so many copies here. The game has lots of buzz for cutting edge Direct X 10 graphics, but that's also the reason people can't buy the game.
I really don't see this game hitting 1.6 million copies. Farcry, another high system reqs game, had a very hard time even reaching 1 million copies. As more first person shooter gaming moves to consoles, I think it'll be even harder for a high system req FPS to hit these kind of numbers.
Crysis looks amazing. Even though it will initially appeal to a niche market with powerful machines to run it, the game will eventually gain more and more momentum in sales as more people make the plunge and upgrade their PCs/switch to Windows Vista. I believe this game will be a technical showpiece used for years to benchmark and compare PCs. Therefore, I do not find this game overvalued at all.
Although Crysis looks like a truly amazing PC shooter, the stock price seems out of whack. We know this is going to be a somewhat niche title given the high specs, yet the forecast is higher than very mainstream games like Battlefield 2142.
Farcry was another highly rated but high spec game and that barely made it over a million units. At this stage for that game, the forecast would've been much lower as the probability of hitting 1 million would've been lower.
To supplement the article I posted with the videos of CryENGINE2 is this article, which states that Crysis will include the engine as a map editor for the game! Featuring "nearly all of the features of the fully licensed engine, and that modders may be able to work out terms to release commercial software created with the free editor."
As I have commented in other PC games that have rather high system requirements, they tend to sell rather well over the long term if the gameplay holds up and there's an active modding community ala Half-Life. The best example _is_ by far Half-Life 2, where the coming release of Half-Life Episode 2 is based on the original Half-Life Source engine which was released in 2004!
Those screenshots really make me want to do more PC gaming. The problem from the simExchange's perspective is screenshots that good also mean intense hardware that greatly reduces the number of people who can actually play it. I think the stock price really comes down to the system reqs on this one.
I had thought all the graphics talk was huff and puff, but that screenshot comparing real life and Crysis shots, the realistitc facial textures, and the weapons add on images are pretty incredible how detailed they are.
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