There seems to be a macho philosophy underpinning PC game development: if your current project runs on a majority of PCs it is, by definition, lame. To be hotly anticipated it must only be playable on the highest spec machines kitted out with the most bloody of bleeding edge graphics cards.
According to TeamXbox.com, Bernd Diemer, senior game designer at Crytek, has just been telling a German publication that, "next-generation consoles don't offer enough computational power to run Crysis".
Not enough computational power?! Two feature-packed multi-processor machines - one of which isn't even out yet?
No, apparently only DirectX 10 - shipping with Vista - will allow this beast to play "as it was intended".
If this is all accurate, it's a baffling indictment of the development scene. What we're supposed to do here is gasp in astonishment and barely contained excitement - it's like some steroidhead on Venice beach complaining loudly that he's run out of dumbbells heavy enough to challenge his vein splattered biceps. ATI vs nVidia, AMD vs Intel: in the age of hyper-accelerated platform warfare, developers are unwitting pawns in a mystifying and destructive game. Power is synonymous with quality, they imply. Well, no. No it isn't.
Yet this kind of electronic willy waving is commonplace. You can blame the technology manufacturing companies for relentlessly pushing new products. But then you can also factor in the fans for salivating over 3D techno-jargon. And then there's the developers themselves, so desperate to prove their cutting edge credentials they'll happily prioritise the ridiculous processing demands of their code over the genius of their game design.
Of course, you can understand studios wanting to stay one step ahead of the current suggested specifications - with an 18 month development cycle liable to slip into two years, it's necessary to aim high. But Crytek's previous game - the ingenious Far Cry - is just as entertaining now as it was two years ago - because it had some good ideas, and was beautifully designed.
You can experience those good ideas now. On all current formats. Without forking out hundreds on a new PC so powerful it could conceivably oversee NASA operations for the next ten years.
