Crytek: Crysis can be as big as COD

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 10 November, 2010

"There's no reason it can't be."

Activision's Call of Duty is the biggest first-person shooter franchise of all time, and Treyarch's recently released Black Ops is expected to be the biggest game of 2010 – but one developer reckons it can match COD's phenomenal popularity with a FPS series of its own.

That developer is Crytek, and the game is Crysis.

"We say why not?" executive producer Nathan Camarillo told Eurogamer when asked if Crysis can be as big as Call of Duty.

"We always do. Obviously with Crysis 2 we have to set a high quality bar and get everyone's attention across all platforms. That's our goal with the title."

Why does Crytek have such confidence in its super soldier series? Because it appeals to so many gamers.

"As the franchise grows down the line, there's no reason it can't be as big [as Call of Duty]," Camarillo insisted.

"It's very appealing in that it's a near future military setting. It appeals to sci-fi gamers as well because of the sci-tech, science fiction elements. It's not a space opera. It's not set 300 years in the future. It's 13 years in the future.

"It's something people identify with and can take this small leap of faith to get into this world and this universe. By offering a great single-player campaign, a great multiplayer experience and giving people something fresh and different than a normal soldier can do with the nanosuit – it's a pretty powerful feeling."

Talking of down the line, Camarillo confirmed Crytek plans to release more games in the series.

"It's the start of a new future for Crysis. We're taking it very seriously. That's all I can really say about it. We wouldn't put this much effort into it if this were where it was ending. That doesn't make sense.

"It's in our best interest to grow Crysis into a very long-running franchise. Maybe that means Crysis 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... Crysis Infinity.

"We plan on growing it into a big franchise. So it doesn't do us any good to not realise the maximum potential of every Crysis product going into release."

Christian Donlan saw Crysis 2 for Eurogamer in June.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (38) Latest comment 10 months ago

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  • PixelPirate #1 2 years ago

    "We say why not?" executive producer Nathan Camarillo told Eurogamer when asked if Crysis can be as big as Call of Duty.

    ..Because COD comes out yearly, so the masses dont forget about it, Crysis has a large development schedule!

  • Gambit1977 #2 2 years ago

    Mentioning COD gets us higher up on google ;)

  • rojjer #3 2 years ago

    it sure as shit looks nicer than COD - played some COD:Black ops last night and boy was it urrrrrgleee. Maybe I've been spoiled playing MOH online. Gameplay was still great though so I guess that's the main thing

    Edit: This is the COD game engine online, it does look better in single player
    Edited by rojjer at 10/11/10 @ 10:35

  • beastmaster #4 2 years ago

    Great. A potential great franchise is going to turn into a run & gun.

  • Widge #5 2 years ago

    I hope Crysis does well and the tech is good... if only to provide devs with a different set of tools to UE3.

  • NimbusTLD #6 2 years ago

    The alien factor automatically makes you less popular than CoD, sorry.

  • Raznilof #7 2 years ago

    Every time a blockbuster comes out the guys at Crytek "use" it to pimp their own game.

    A little more confidence is in order; you don't need the comparison, deliver on your own strength and I am sure people will judge it as such.

  • Fab4 #8 2 years ago

    Tomorrow's article that shoe-horns in CoD: Gareth Bale can be as big as CoD

  • GamesConnoisseur #9 2 years ago

    Brand awareness

    That is Crysis highest problem and many casual gamers who get few games a year, such as FIFA, COD and other yearly updates wouldn't very likely get Crysis 2, unless the word of mouths get very unignorable on the back of a very heavy marketing.

    Tackle that and produce top notch game of the year or decade quality will help!

  • arcam #10 2 years ago

    Crysis is too complicated to appeal to the same number of people as CoD.

    Different modes for your armour, open-ended maps and multiple simultaneous objectives - Crysis will need lots of 'streamlining' and 'improved accessibility' before it will have the gigantic mass appeal of Call of Duty.
    Edited by arcam at 10/11/10 @ 10:50

  • LFace #11 2 years ago

    Although I dont particularly find CoD the be all and end all of FPS games, Crysis will never be up there with it as frankly Crysis is a bunch of arse and fails at many aspects.

  • Goodfella #12 2 years ago

    Crysis is far superior to CoD, at least in the single player game anyway.

  • ybfelix #13 2 years ago

    Sure why not? Who thought COD can be bigger than Halo?

    But please don't homogenize your product in the process. He who fights monsters beware becoming one himself, etc.

  • ChthonicEcho #14 2 years ago

    Competition is a good motivator, but it makes little sense to aim exclusively for Metacritic scores or popularity just for the sake of it. I remember the forsaken times when developers boasted that their upcoming game will be liked by many, not that it will be as big as some generic popular franchise.

  • ThePissartist #15 2 years ago

    Crysis 1 is overrated in my mind. I only played it for a couple of hours (yes my PC is powerful enough). I'm not sold on open world shooters (same for Farcry 2).

    Call of Duty is an infinitely better game.

  • StolenGlory #16 2 years ago

    There is every reason it can't be.

    But no reason stopping it from being the better game.

  • cianchristopher #17 2 years ago

    At least if you're gonna run your game at 30fps, make sure it has no screen tearing. CoD runs at 60fps with no screen tearing, and is all the better for it.

    THen you've got something like Halo or Killzone, which only manage 30fps but keep a steady vsync.

    After that, you're down in Battlefield: Bad Company and Far Cry 2 territory, where you're looking at 30fps, with framerate drops and tear lines racing up and down the screen. Jesus, and these guys wonder why Call of Duty sells 5 or 10 times more than they do?

    Does anyone really think that CoD would be as big as it is if it ran at ~28fps with screen tearing?

    Obv. this is for the console versions only.

  • Haloboy #18 2 years ago

    In other words 'in the future we can step even further away from the PC gaming stable than we already have'.

    What happened Crytek? You used to be so cool. :(

  • coolbritannia #19 2 years ago

    They realised the cool kids all have consoles, nerd.

  • nuanimal #20 2 years ago

    Need more zombies though.

  • feistycheese #21 2 years ago

    I dont want it to be bigger than COD, I just want it to be really good.

  • Haloboy #22 2 years ago

    @coolbritannia

    Ouch that hurt my already fragile self worth. I don't own a console so am not cool. But no matter, I'll be happy as a pig in shit once I get hold of Crysis 2 nano pack edition. On my uncool PC.

  • geeza2020 #23 2 years ago

    Nerd RAGE!!!

  • arcam #24 2 years ago

    Need more zombies though.

    The zombies are all playing Call of Duty.

  • bdc #25 2 years ago

    Not a fucking chance in Hell, I'm afraid.

  • molekiller #26 2 years ago

    The recent 360 multiplayer video of Crysis 2 sucked hard...

  • Deckard1 #27 2 years ago

    No chance... haddock maybe, but never cod.

  • StolenGlory #28 2 years ago

    "After that, you're down in Battlefield: Bad Company and Far Cry 2 territory, where you're looking at 30fps, with framerate drops and tear lines racing up and down the screen. Jesus, and these guys wonder why Call of Duty sells 5 or 10 times more than they do?

    Does anyone really think that CoD would be as big as it is if it ran at ~28fps with screen tearing?

    Obv. this is for the console versions only."

    I would much rather embrace the framerate & v-sync trade off that I get in BFBC2 for the destructable environments, choice of vehicles and large, expansive areas that are sorely lacking from CoD.

    But at the end of day that's just my opinion. Ultimately though, the tight, focused nature of CoD's MP demands that the frame rate is rock solid, whereas in BFBC2, that requirement isn't so essential (however a nice luxury 60FPS might seem).
    Edited by StolenGlory at 10/11/10 @ 12:43

  • Cronan #29 2 years ago

    Crysis 2 at the Eurogamer Expo was horrible, seemed to be performing very badly

  • makeamazing #30 2 years ago

    The two biggest franchies are COD and GTA, i dont think Crysis is on that level, just doesnt have a long/interesting history imho. It might sell well, but i dont think it will do those kind of figures.

  • subedii #31 2 years ago

    And this right here, is the sometimes problem with devs and their expectations.

    Cervat Yerli famously had a massive hissy fit regarding piracy of Crysis on the PC. Which, you know, he has a right to, it was pirated quite heavily.

    The problem though stems from the fact that he genuinely believed that Crysis should have sold 4-5 times what it originally did (somewhere over 1 million copies, I'd be wiling to put that number at maybe 1.5 by now considering it's been a slow but consistent seller).

    To put that into perspective for you, that's the kind of number that would put you into Gears of War territory. What's more telling is that publisher EA actually said it exceeded their expectations of how well it'd do. It certainly made a profit for Crytek, enough that they were able to pump out a sequel, and heck, even had the resources to buy up Free Radical Design.

    Now I really enjoyed Crysis, I thought it was a brilliant FPS. But let's be brutally honest here, dude was crazy for ever thinking that. I mean Gears of War was 360's first real AAA title, managed to arrive before Halo 3, it naturally made a huge impact. Crysis on the other hand, aside from being on a platform that sells less than the consoles by default had to deal with:

    - Extremely high system requirements which cut it off the majority of the market
    - More complicated gameplay, which is naturally going to reduce your market much further
    - And crucially, coming out at the same time as Modern Warfare, Orange Box, Halo 3 and Bioshock.

    Given all that, Crysis did extremely freaking well at over 1 million units shipped. Let's put that in more comparison. Because Dead Space? much higher marketing budget, didn't break 1 million. Same with Mirror's Edge. And those were multi-platform titles. Heck, look up the lifetime sales that Capcom released for their platinum titles, so many of their biggest franchise iterations "only" sell in the 1-2 million mark (again, typically multiplatform titles).

    [link url=http://kotaku.com/393197/anyone-for-the-lifetime-sales-of-some-capcom-games
    ]http://kotaku.com/393197/anyone-for-the-...[/link]

    And that's the list of titles that did go platinum, there's undoubtedly more that didn't.

    What I'm getting at is that they have wholly unrealistic expectations here. Modern Warfare is a freak, an exception, it is not normal. An FPS dev saying they can go up against Modern Warfare is like an MMO dev saying they're totally going to challenge World of Warcraft at their own game. Having those crazy expectations for your title is stupid, and it leads to the kind of nutty rage we then see when the title "only" sells a million or two.

    It's crazy. Like I said, I loved Crysis, I certainly view it and Crysis Warhead as better games than the Call of Duty franchise. But they are seriously setting their expectations way too high here.
    Edited by subedii at 10/11/10 @ 15:33

  • hiddenranbir #32 2 years ago

    Same delusions that had them bemoan the still impressive sales of Crysis 1. Which probably made them change a lot about Crysis 2, maybe in a bad way. Who knows.

  • epiazk #33 2 years ago

    Whatever, Crysis is the best FPS I think I ever played. Very very very good, maybe needs a tightened up multi-player and other stuff, but the fundamentals of the engine and the level design are excellent.

  • voodoo172 #34 2 years ago

    Unfortunately I doubt Crysis can be as big as CoD simply due to CoD being a better game. At least with that franchise the quality of the titles is mildly consistent. Whereas Crysis was graphics over everything else and, in a way, felt like a tech demo with a game tacked on the end - with aliens sewn in for good measure. I had the hardware to play the original, however the overall package just did not appeal...

  • Bravestinsane #35 2 years ago

    I have 1 reason it wont be as big.

    Eurogamer wont spam us with 5 new stories a day about Crysis, just like they don't do with CoD....oh wait.

  • TheGuvernor #36 2 years ago

    Crysis was a game changer - in terms of tech, quality & game play it blew everything else away.
    Kind of still does.
    Crytech always seem, to me, to be a couple of years ahead of everyone else.
    Look back at FarCry - first intelligent AI in any shooter, semi open world game play, crazy graphics for the time.
    I don't buy the whole 'tech demo not a good game' line.
    The only way to beat COD would be to compromise your vision & dumb down your strengths.
    Please don't do it!!
    We'll support you in droves if you don't!

  • ghiest #37 2 years ago

    Unfortunately the net code and hit detection in crysis and crysis wars was just awful enough for me to quit playing it. Although I could run it just fine graphically (and it looked a ton better) it just feels bad compared to CoD. The weapons for one feel too weedy and having to hit someone masses amounts of times really annoys me. I think if they kept the engine, fixed the hit detection and then threw out the rest and started over you would have a base for something decent.

  • james-mw3-mw3 #38 10 months ago

    Modern Warfare 3 will be released on 8th November! It's actually the 8th main Call of Duty game, and the fifth developed by Infinity Ward. Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer will debut at the Call of Duty XP convention on September 2 and I'm betting that they will show all the weapons and perks of MW3.