I am actually going to say that both crytek and EA or at fault but I believe the lionshare of the blame is on crytek thou.

If you remember last year after E3 crysis 2 was originally slated for a fall launch. it was going to be launched in september or october but then got delayed til March of 2011. This means crytek told EA they could not get this out the door on time and EA made some adjustments to there release schedule to accomodate Crytek.

Now understand EA is a publicly held company which means ownership is in the hands of shareholders and the perception of how well or how bad the company is doing is usually perceived by perception. For example poor reviews of Medal of Honor, caused the stock price of EA to drop dramatically because of the poor reviews. Although I could understand why they released Medal of Honor when they did and in the state that it was in was because the market for that game was rapidly closing. There is no way that a polished medal of honor could have even began to compete with BF3 and EA knew what it had with BF3. That's why that game got released in october in the state that its currently in. You also have to take into account that the big wigs at EA are under pressure from the market and shareholders in regards to competing with activision.

My belief is that originally crysis 2 was not going to be a dx11 game at all and it was just going to get released last fall. But then Nvidia steps in with 2 million dollars with a deal regarding this game and I believe this was the real reason for the delay in the first place. EA/Crytek took Nvidia's 2 mil and said we can implement dx11 on the pc side and also optimize the game for FXAA. EA then asked crytek when could you get this done and they said in the spring. EA said can u do it before the end of the 2nd quarter and Crytek said yes. EA said good cause we need this out by then to please our shareholders and the market.

Now here is where the problem starts. Cryengine 3 does not support direct x11 currently. So if you are going to build a game with dx11 your going to have to have a tool that can implement those features. So that means they have to build a dx11 capable version of cryengine 3 before they could implement dx11 features in crysis 2.

So crytek made them a dx11 version of cryengine 3 but by the time they got it working or at least got it functional enough that they could begin converting crysis 2 console version to dx11 pc version, time was rapidly running out .(note: if you look on crytek's mycryengine website you will find no where on that site that says cryengine 3 supports dx11. )

Crytek knew they would not have a dx11 version in time so they said it would be patched in later. But once you have an engine that would enable those features your going to have to have assets to place in the game to take advantage of those features. And I am willing to bet that's what they are doing now or they could have the assets but lack the tool to take advantage of them and that would probably explain Tiago Sousa's tweet the other day.

So I place a lot of the blame on crytek because they built a game around dx9, but told Nvidia that they could deliver on dx11 on release date which was false.

This also explains why there is no sandbox editor because the dx11 one can only be found with crytek and it would not make since to release a dx11 tool with a game that was built in dx9. Nor would it make since to release a dx9 tool for a game that suppose to be dx11.

The whole point of the secrecy probably has to do more with cryengine 3 then anything else. Cryengine 3's selling point has been that you could build all your versions of the game simultaenously , but from what is taking place here , makes that selling point questionable

Now for a timeline

E3 2010 crysis 2 was slated for a fall christmas launch in 2010

then in the beginning of august 2010 we find crysis delayed til first quarter 2011

as shown here : http://www.1up.com/news/crysis-2-delayed-2011-financial

but then we find out a month later as why the delay has occurred. It has to do with nvidia and there 2 million dollars. you can see more info on this here

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/faith/nvidias-2-million-crysis/

and then 2 months later we get an article on crysis 2 regarding the game being redesigned for the gtx580. But we know now that it really was for the the gtx590. You can read that here

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/faith/crysis-2-being-re-designed-for-gtx580-expect-delays/

this is why you won't see crysis 2 dx11 til probably summer. The thing is thou will anyone care by then, because I bet the BF3 beta will be active by the time dx11 crysis 2 see's the light of day

NOT SURE IT WANT READ!

Nice theory. Actually makes a lot of sense.

Definitely one of the more thought out posts. Interesting theory, qbert.

Actually op the Cryengine 3 does support DX11. Watch the GDC footage. So that part of your argument or discussion is null and void. Still a good read though.

I can't find the footage but I know it's supported. I remember watching it.

I do know the engine supports it because the leak showed the files. So they do have an engine capable of outputting DX11 otherwise they wouldn't have compiled DX11 .dll's for their engine.

Ah, thanks for the 411.

It confirms my suspicion of consoles having thoroughly destabilized the development of a DX11 capable Cryengine 3. Too bad by the time Crysis 2 really takes off, BF3 (which already looks a lot better then Crysis 2 in prealpha stages), will have completely overshadowed it.

@ Praetorian, I think he means that they didn't have the DX11 assets on time, or in CE3, and not just a DX11 capable CE3.

Here's what I believe in short:

1. Why does Crysis 2 supports only DX9?
- Because it's a console port and Crytek didn't have enough time to implement DX11 (or even DX10) in the PC version.

2. Is Crytek going to release a DX11 patch?
- Yes, they are obligated to do it, unless they aren't going to release any other PC game in the future; because if they will, no one will buy that. Crytek is going to lose all its hardcoe fanbase if they don't release a DX11 patch, and they don't want that. As great as Crysis 2 might look with current graphics, they are feeling betrayed and cheated right now, so Crytek should make up for that, sooner or later.

3. Why hasn't Crytek announced any DX11 patch yet?
- Because if they do so, everyone will wait until the patch is released before they buy the game; so, that would hurt the current sales.

You're wrong in your second paragraph and I'll tell you why.

EA SPECIFICALLY postponed Crysis 2 so that Medal of Honor can get a chance for sales. That's how they can maxamize sales in the end of 2010 and start 2011 with Crysis 2 and DA2 nicely. Which....they have.

They even said it themselves that they wanted MoH to have a chance to shine a bit and that Crysis 2 can now have more work done on it. Crytek added some goodies in the extra months, but these extra goodies didn't allow them to finish polishing up the game (so we get patches and updates).

Actually op the Cryengine 3 does support DX11. Watch the GDC footage. So that part of your argument or discussion is null and void. Still a good read though.

I can't find the footage but I know it's supported. I remember watching it.

I do know the engine supports it because the leak showed the files. So they do have an engine capable of outputting DX11 otherwise they wouldn't have compiled DX11 .dll's for their engine.


I would like to see what video you are talking about that indicates that cryengine 3 supports dx11. I have yet to find one video that backs up your claim. There is nothing on the cryengine website that says it supports dx11 nor is there any documentation otherwise that says it does.

So please enlighten us with what you know with references

You're wrong in your second paragraph and I'll tell you why.

EA SPECIFICALLY postponed Crysis 2 so that Medal of Honor can get a chance for sales. That's how they can maxamize sales in the end of 2010 and start 2011 with Crysis 2 and DA2 nicely. Which....they have.

They even said it themselves that they wanted MoH to have a chance to shine a bit and that Crysis 2 can now have more work done on it. Crytek added some goodies in the extra months, but these extra goodies didn't allow them to finish polishing up the game (so we get patches and updates).


If that is the case then EA could have easily released crysis 2 in december. Medal of honor came out October 12th 2010. there would have still been enough time to release crysis 2 in nov or dec.

EA knew they had a lemon on there hands with MOH because the beta response was not positive.

If anything that would have given more incentive to release crysis 2 in the fall holiday season to capitalize on the money spent on gifts during the christmas season

In the leaked version there were these files:

CryRenderD3D9.dll
CryRenderD3D11.dll
D3DX9_42.dll
D3DX10_42.dll

So something other than just DX9 has been going on.

Not to mention the Bin64 folder....

So actually CE3 not having DX11 makes it completely cryteks fault because that is such a **** load of fail.

Nvidia got screwed.

In the leaked version there were these files:

CryRenderD3D9.dll
CryRenderD3D11.dll
D3DX9_42.dll
D3DX10_42.dll

So something other than just DX9 has been going on.

Not to mention the Bin64 folder....

This is the proof that this man's theory is true. I remember those files as well.

EA could have easily fixed MoH to get a Holiday release, it's just that everyone was too afraid of the annual CoD: as always too much of the CoD succes it's that there's no competition when it comes out. MoH was too buggy, and every other game just ran and hid from it -I remember buyin blops not beacuse I wanted it that much, I was just bored of other shooters, and I still regret buying it lol. I bet this year it's gonna be different with a real competitor BF3.

One of the most sophisticated topics Ive read.There needs to be a division between true PC games and consoles,I own a hefty PC and a PS3.What the hell happened to the good old days where BF 2 remained on PC,COD 4 PC then transferred later to consoles was fantastic still,I don't understand why they have to do this simultaneously ,the games should be made from passion of making fantastic games like BFV, BF2,COD4, CSS, and even Crysis 1,all dedicated towards the PC.

EA could have easily fixed MoH to get a Holiday release, it's just that everyone was too afraid of the annual CoD: as always too much of the CoD succes it's that there's no competition when it comes out. MoH was too buggy, and every other game just ran and hid from it -I remember buyin blops not beacuse I wanted it that much, I was just bored of other shooters, and I still regret buying it lol. I bet this year it's gonna be different with a real competitor BF3.


I don't they could fix MOH in time. The single player version had been in development for 2 years and it was only 4 1/2 hours long and that's if you played it on hard. It had some graphical problems as well.

The multi on the other hand there was a problem with the hitbox detection that was never corrected. But its biggest problem was lack of content. only 15 ranks and I think the game had maybe 10 weapons there was not a whole lot of content

nice read @op were it gets dirty is crytec let the dx11 rumour fester for 5 days before coming out with a vague response saying we never siad anything.now i for one would not have bought this game if i new dx11 was never coming.so yeah marketing.

I have become convinced the only way gamers are going to find our interests served in the long run, especially as multiple generations who grew up gaming are actually advlts, is for us to BECOME the shareholders. Everyone loves to believe that "voting with your wallet" is all we can do, but the truth is things aren't that simple. You only need to stick out your arm in the game section of Best Buy for proof that quality =\= sales =\= more quality. hardcoe gamers can boycott all they want, but unfortunately there will still be millions of more casual gamers who buy or don't buy for entirely different reasons. All boycotting will get the hardcoe crowd (or any given crowd) is even LESS of what we want. For example I was very active in the Nintendo community (embarrassingly so) during the Gamecube/preWii (lol) era, and I saw this happen in front of me. The fans who'd grown up with Zelda and Metroid grew increasingly disenfranchised by Nintendo's increasing push into casual gaming, but in the end, Nintendo didn't start catering to our wishes to keep the loyalists' business - they just bet even more heavily on the casual market, raking in the dough with the incredible margins of their low-tech products. And honestly, the occasional bones they threw to the older crowd probably did very well with the also-hardcoe, also-loyal fans who existd outside of the so-called "Nintendo Community" (in other words, the majority of them. People in these sorts of official online communities very quickly seem to succumb to delusions of grandeur, when in reality they are at most a few thousand out of potentially millions of people whod also describe themselves as "hardcoe", but don't spend their time on forums).

My point, which I need to get to before I totally derail my train of thought, is that there will never be a united enough community for these sorts of grievances to be solved with purchasing power. The only real way hardcoe gamers as a group will ever be able to truly have our interests in quality trump pure capitalism is if we start becoming shareholders in these companies. That's the real way to vote with your wallet - mainly because shareholders actually vote on company decisions!

Or make the transition from hardcoe gamer, to hardcoe programmer.

I like it how there's still no announcement about DX11.

I have become convinced the only way gamers are going to find our interests served in the long run, especially as multiple generations who grew up gaming are actually advlts, is for us to BECOME the shareholders. Everyone loves to believe that "voting with your wallet" is all we can do, but the truth is things aren't that simple. You only need to stick out your arm in the game section of Best Buy for proof that quality =\= sales =\= more quality. hardcoe gamers can boycott all they want, but unfortunately there will still be millions of more casual gamers who buy or don't buy for entirely different reasons. All boycotting will get the hardcoe crowd (or any given crowd) is even LESS of what we want. For example I was very active in the Nintendo community (embarrassingly so) during the Gamecube/preWii (lol) era, and I saw this happen in front of me. The fans who'd grown up with Zelda and Metroid grew increasingly disenfranchised by Nintendo's increasing push into casual gaming, but in the end, Nintendo didn't start catering to our wishes to keep the loyalists' business - they just bet even more heavily on the casual market, raking in the dough with the incredible margins of their low-tech products. And honestly, the occasional bones they threw to the older crowd probably did very well with the also-hardcoe, also-loyal fans who existd outside of the so-called "Nintendo Community" (in other words, the majority of them. People in these sorts of official online communities very quickly seem to succumb to delusions of grandeur, when in reality they are at most a few thousand out of potentially millions of people whod also describe themselves as "hardcoe", but don't spend their time on forums).

My point, which I need to get to before I totally derail my train of thought, is that there will never be a united enough community for these sorts of grievances to be solved with purchasing power. The only real way hardcoe gamers as a group will ever be able to truly have our interests in quality trump pure capitalism is if we start becoming shareholders in these companies. That's the real way to vote with your wallet - mainly because shareholders actually vote on company decisions!

For me it's not an issue of boycott it's an issue of

Games industry makes technical progress = I want to play games
Games industry doesn't make technical progress or makes very little = I want to do something else, and maybe play the games I already have from time to time.

These consoles have this steady rate of pathetically slow progress. Diminishing returns define games development on console now and that sickness has spilled over into PC Gaming. The games just don't interest me if I've seen things equal or better before in a game that doesn't really revolutionize game play (in a good way) why buy it?

I have become convinced the only way gamers are going to find our interests served in the long run, especially as multiple generations who grew up gaming are actually advlts, is for us to BECOME the shareholders.

If you are talking about a company that has large numbers of shareholders then nobody is really in control of it any more my understanding is even a majority shareholder has to follow strict guidelines because of a legal duty to the shareholders.

So then it just grows into a big money making monster that nobody can control. It has one goal make share holders money and often especially in primary industry this is done by externalizing costs from itself. If the share holders end up worse off overall, or even dead, as a result of these external costs the company doesn't care so long as it got away with it and made them a profit on their shares.

Thats why we can't actually do anything to avoid climate change, because we have no control over the polluters (companies) they are like Skynet in Terminator only they are not actually aware.

this also explains why valve puts out games that are consistent in quality. Valve is privately held.

I have become convinced the only way gamers are going to find our interests served in the long run, especially as multiple generations who grew up gaming are actually advlts, is for us to BECOME the shareholders.

If you are talking about a company that has large numbers of shareholders then nobody is really in control of it any more my understanding is even a majority shareholder has to follow strict guidelines because of a legal duty to the shareholders.

So then it just grows into a big money making monster that nobody can control. It has one goal make share holders money and often especially in primary industry this is done by externalizing costs from itself. If the share holders end up worse off overall, or even dead, as a result of these external costs the company doesn't care so long as it got away with it and made them a profit on their shares.

Thats why we can't actually do anything to avoid climate change, because we have no control over the polluters (companies) they are like Skynet in Terminator only they are not actually aware.
Well, you're right in that no one individual or group of shareholders is ever going to have full control, and I also think you're dead-on about the very nature of big corporations like EA. Just as a human being as we think of it is an emergent property of an incomprehensibly complex network of interactions between cells, a corporation like EA cannot fully be understood simply in terms of its individual shareholders or employees. It's a non-human (meta-human?) entity with goals that might not actually even match those of any person who composes it. Likewise, there is a finite amount of control we could hope to exercise. However, it's still a non-zero amount. A single cell in the human body can't change the human into a cat, but a single cell CAN have strong influence over some aspects of the body, e.g., a single cancer cell that grows and causes a limb to be removed.

Of course... it's not really very appealing to make the anology that we can be like cancer to EA... The negative aspects aren't what I'm trying to get at. My point is, if 10% of EA's shares were in the hands of people who were passionate about games and wanted EA to more highly prioritize the quality of its releases, our influence on the corporate direction would be something non-zero. At the very worst, we would be still voiceless and the corporation would continue putting shareholder profits before quality... in which case we'd still be winning, because we'd be sharing in those profits.

while I will agree with you in a lot of things you say in this case the lion share of the blame goes to crytek.

EA makes its own games but crytek is a studio and EA is its publisher. EA is not responsible in this case crytek, for the most part thought they could deliver on dx11 in march and they could not. Furthermore this is probably an embarrasment to them not because of the game but because of cryengine 3 not being dx11 capable when, UDK currently is. You remeber earlier Cevat Yerli talked smack about the unreal engine saying it could not do crysis 2 on consoles. I am sure some devs at Epic are laughing at the spectacle that is the pc launch of crysis 2

All the problems with the cheats in multiplayer are probably because of the leaked version of the game. I am sure hackers went thru that code like vultures , on a carnage filled battlefield.