Final Crysis
Epic do it. id do it. Even educated fleas do it. And now Crytek have announced they too are dumping PC exclusives. VG247 spots Crytek's Cevat Yerli telling PC Play about the aftershocks of Crysis:
"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin. I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming: PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive any more."
Whether or not his mooted reason for it rings true, it's sad news, and leaves me wondering who'll next pick up the baton of bleeding-edge graphics. Crytek collected it from Epic, who'd collected it from id, but there's no obvious successor - with the possible exception of Valve, who lately (and happily) have been concentrating more on eyecandy-via-art, not tech. That said, in these splendidly idea-rich times for PC, do we even still need someone pushing quite so hard against the graphical ceiling?