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Cry Engine 2 on consoles look nearly identical to PC

PC gamers seem to be constantly complaining about the recently released Crysis, which runs on the Cry Engine 2. Apparently few machines can run the game at the highest settings. Well console owners can let them know, "you should have bought a console."

An interview with Crytek’s Engine Business Manager, Harald Seeley, revealed that the company expects the console versions to “look like they’re running at high settings, or nearly high settings, on a PC.”

"Yes, we definitely tailor the engine specifically to each platform. More than just the difference in CPU and video hardware capabilities of PCs and consoles is at play here. So are the much smaller memory budgets we must work with, the lack of a hard disk on some models, and the acceptance requirements of the hardware vendors themselves. All have an effect on how we approach each version of the engine.

"The surprising thing has been how well the consoles can perform visually, once this tailoring is in place. We expect the final outcome will result in games that look like they’re running at high settings, or nearly high settings, on a PC. Actually, we found it as much or more challenging to address the memory limitations of the consoles when converting our current AI system, as we did while converting our rendering engine or physics system, which was not something you might have expected at the start."

When asked specifically about developing for the PlayStation 3, the company took the approach Epic Games took with Unreal Tournament III, claiming it would be a challenge but the company would be better off in the end. He claims that working out the kinks and nuances in this first go around will allow for better gaming experiences provided exclusively by the PlayStation 3 console.

"Well there is no doubt that porting our engine to the PlayStation 3 is the more challenging of our two ongoing conversion projects, but that works to our advantage in the end. We feel certain we have the ability to get the most that is possible out of that platform, and therefore PS3 games which run on our engine in the future will definitely stand significantly apart from other games that don’t."

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