Electronic Arts has quietly announced that Crysis 2 has been delayed into the fourth quarter of financial 2011, that is sometime between January and March 2011. There has been no official notice from Crytek, but the recent sales figures report from EA states that the game will see release alongside Bulletstorm, Dragon Age 2 and Dead Space 2, at the beginning of next year.
Crysis was initially set to arrive this holiday, but the high concentration of big name releases has probably prompted EA and Crytek to move the title in the spring of 2011. Battlefield: Bad Company 2, another first person shooter released in March 2010, proved to be very successful despite the non-traditional launch window. According to Gamespot, John Schappert, EA's chief operations officer, has declared that Crysis 2 was delayed for a “better window and polishing.”
Crysis 2 is the first installment in the franchise to appear on consoles, as Crytek has managed to develop a graphics engine that can also run on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The first two titles, Crysis and Crysis: Warhead, are still regarded benchmarks for PC gaming, because of their impressive visuals, but also of their very high system requirements. This new rendition will move the action from a tropical jungle to an urban setting. New York is the setting of an alien attack that the series' protagonist, Nomad, will try to stop using the new version of the Nano-suit that enables him to have superhuman abilities.
Crytek is promising that this new first person shooter will have lower system requirements than the original. The developer is also boasting that it is the only title that is able to run in 3D on all the three platforms it is released on. A demonstration of the multiplayer component of Crysis 2 will be shown during this year's Gamescom 2010 in Köln, Germany.
