"Impossible" for next-gen to match gaming PCs; Crysis 3 will push PC tech

The still unannounced next generation of consoles won’t be able to compete with today’s modern gaming PCs when it comes to raw power.

That’s according to Crytek boss Cevat Yerli, who told Eurogamer that: "Without breaking NDAs that are in place, realistically, from purely a price point perspective, it is impossible.

"It’s impossible to package $2000-3000 into a mainstream, let’s say $500 console. I’m not saying they are $500 consoles. They may launch a console at $2000, but the consumer pricing is usually much lower than that.

"So, given consumer pricing, and given the cost of production of a gamer PC and the amount of watt of power it needs, which is like a fridge, it’s impossible."

Yerli also added that Crysis 3 will return to the template laid down by the original Crysis by pushing gaming PC tech to its limits.

The 2007 title was notorious for pushing the requirements needed to squeeze out its gorgeous maximum settings. However, 2011’s Crysis 2 reined this in as the studio focused on the Xbox 360 and PS3 releases.

PC gamers made their displeasure known – and Crytek has heard loud and clear.

"This time around the consoles couldn’t gain much more," Yerli added. "It was like a five per cent or ten per cent gain. That’s it. But the PC version, because the specs are now much more evolved, this is two years later, effectively, this is two generations of PCs we could leverage and DirectX 11 is fully rolled out, so now we could really push it.

"I made a joke at one point saying, ‘we’re going to melt PCs,’ and I think we are going to melt PCs again. People want that, and we’ll deliver that.

"With Crysis 2 we tried to make the spec available to as many PC gamers as possible. Then we heard back from the loudest group, which was enthusiast PC gamers, ‘our PCs are running this game at 200 frames. What the hell? We should be running at 30 frames’.

"Our graphics programmers said, ‘we’re going to give them a game they can’t run any more’.”