Crytek: Crysis 2 to push Xbox 360, PS3 capabilities to the limit

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli believes their upcoming shooter, Crysis 2, will be such a graphical tour de force that it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the developer to push the platforms it will be released on to their limits. That's a given for the PC, and Yerli is betting Crysis 2's CryEngine 3 will easily put the PS3 and Xbox 360 muscle to the test. Speaking to Develop:

I believe with Crysis 2 both the PS3 and 360 versions of the game will perform to their limits, until there is no more water in the rock. As for difference, between Consoles and PC I see a difference. The PC version will outscale and outperform the consoles, between each console I believe the experience will be finally both next-generation, but similar experience.

This doesn't necessarily confirm that the PS3 and Xbox 360 games will look equal despite the difference in horsepower between the two consoles. Indeed, Yerli stressed that the goal was to make Crysis 2 the best it can be no matter the platform. That said, Yerli would reference the PS3 in particular when speaking to Gamasutra:

"The interesting thing is we did run a performance analysis on the PS3 devkit, and you know the funny thing is the occupation on all the CPUs, the Cell and the GPUs, is pretty much – the needle is at the limit... There's not much more you can do and frankly the breakthrough was very recent, and otherwise we would’ve had a compromised strategy on the consoles, which we don’t have now.

"So I think we will still have an upside, but we're touching the hardware limits already. We do develop very very low level to get that performance out. Like I said, we started three years ago in the research of technology, and we had to dig very deep into the hardware to find the reserves, and say 'oh we have 2% more here, and 1% more here,' and that allowed us actually to get to where we are."

This confirms Crytek will be highly tweaking and optimizing the game to best suit theconsoles' capabilities, with the aim of making effective ports. Staff will be shared for development of Crysis 2 across all platforms.