Mike Doolittle writes:
''Crytek President Cevat Yerli recently cited piracy on the PC a central reason why his company has chosen to shift development to a multiplatform focus. NPD data infamously showed Crysis' first week sales in the U.S. to be fewer than 87,000 copies, an unremarkable figure any way you slice it. NPD data does not factor in e-tail or international figures, but despite EA claiming that the game ultimately sold over a million copies, Yerli seems convinced that the game did not sell to its full potential primarily because of piracy.
I have a different take on it, though. Crysis almost certainly did fall short of its sales potential, even if it sold over 1 million, and piracy may indeed have taken a significant toll-although it's impossible to know just how much. But it's not because the game is too system-intensive (nVidia sold a lot of 8800GTs based on the idea that it was an inexpensive card that could play Crysis), nor is it because the game isn't any good (it averages 91% on Metacritic); rather, it's because Crytek overlooked one of the key channels for modern PC gaming: digital distribution.''
