Interview with Crytek about CryENGINE2, Warhead

The press release for Warhead said that the game will be running on an "enhanced and optimized version of Crytek's CryENGINE 2 technology." Could you offer some basic details about which enhancements have been made? Will Crytek try to make Warhead more scalable than the original Crysis?

Yes, we have made further enhancements to make our CryENGINE 2 even more scaleable, which is a side benefit of having to add features that make it more console friendly, and the luxury of still more time to polish and tune it. At the same time, since the release of Crysis, newer and less expensive hardware has and will continue to become available which reduces the cost of acquiring a PC that can run our game at the highest possible graphics settings. But in reality, the engine has always been quite well optimized for what it does, and now with the latest updates from ourselves, Microsoft and the hardware vendors, most users have reported very satisfactory frame rates at their preferred resolutions, whatever their hardware.

This is a point that has not received much public attention, nor has the fact that the scalability of the engine has never actually held back the sale of Crysis. You only have to look at the comparative PC sales volumes of other prominent FPS games which shipped around the same time to see that other's lower perceived hardware requirements did not actually translate to bigger overall sales numbers than Crysis. Sorry, but we aren't yet ready to reveal the other enhancements to the CryENGINE 2 that we made until we are nearer to our final ship date.