While Crysis is considered by many to be the pinnacle of PC shooters, at least in terms of visual performance, a number of gamers would argue that Bungie's Halo franchise set the standard for first-person shooters on consoles when it first arrived on Xbox back in 2001. With Crytek bringing Crysis 2 to Xbox 360 and PS3 later this year, publisher Electronic Arts is confident it can dethrone Halo in the realm of console shooters. That's quite a statement since Halo: Reach is launching later this year too and will be in direct competition with other shooters like Crysis 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Speaking as part of an in-depth IndustryGamers interview, EA Games label president Frank Gibeau stated outright that his group has been planning to build a "Halo killer" for some time. "...we were trying to craft a Halo-killer, you know a product that would squarely go after what Bungie built with our partners at Crytek. So the Crysis 2 product is spectacular, very high-end, and is going to be a multi-year franchise," he said.
Responding to a question about whether EA approached Bungie before Activision locked them up for 10 years, Gibeau noted that EA Games is already very well stacked in the shooter department. "...so at some point in the portfolio plan you’ve got, when you look at Crytek, DICE, Epic, the LA team building MoH, and then Respawn, you know we got a pretty damn killer team. There’s not a lot of opening positions left on that roster and so that was definitely something that played into how we’ve looked at opportunities out there. But, we’re going for it and I‘ve gotten to know the Bungie guys over the years and they’re a terrific bunch of people, but we’re very pleased and confident with what we got and the franchises in our portfolio," he said.
5 Comments
May 4, 2010
A "Halo killer"? Thats original. Who did he steal that from...Guerrilla? The only real Halo killers have always been the follow-up Halo games. As for his boast, I sure hope that Crysis 2 can outsell Halo: Reach. I mean, Reach is only going to be on the 360 while Crysis 2 will be on the 360, PS3 and Pc.
If Reach still outsells Crysis 2(and theres a pretty good chance it will) I wonder what this EA guy will use as an excuse. I think next time he should set the bar alittle lower, like trying to be a Haze killer:)
May 4, 2010
To be fair, "Halo Killer" was not a term Guerrilla coined - it was thrust on them by the media. That said, c'mon, can we stop with the whole "Halo Killer" thing? If anything has ever done it, it was the Modern Warfare titles (both performed better on the Xbox 360 than the Halo 3 and ODST which released the same year) but the term just feels so played out at this point, after hearing it off and on for the better part of six years.
May 5, 2010
Assuming anyone can actually run it, which was a *BIG* problem with the first Crysis... To this day Crysis is used as a high end system benchmark because taking it's settings to max is enough to cause a mini-Chernobyl where your CPU used to be...
May 5, 2010
Crytek has been talking some big talk lately, with this kind of language and their storyline author taking the Halo storyline to task for being generic and "boring". I think they're just opening their mouths for the sake of PR.
What they don't get is that Halo's success was really only partly about the mechanics of the game. Yeah, it had a good single player. Yeah, it had a REALLY good multiplayer, but for me, the whole package evoked an emotional response, especially with their ad campaign for Halo 3. I absolutely believe that these Crytek blow hards could EVER pull off an ad campaign like the ones for the recent Halo offerings and not make it look like a Michael Bay movie trailer.
May 5, 2010
Yeah, Crysis 2 might not be a Halo-killer, but it sure will burn out your GPU with it's "high-end" graphics. Speaking of burn-out, EA is so stupid for using lingo like "Halo-killer" because that just means the whole debate of Crysis 2 vs. Halo is judged by the Halo standard.
How petty of EA, but more so of Crytek. But then again, it's EA. And Crytek, boy - far be it from anyone learning how to use their game engine except if they got mega $$$. Like EA.