For over a year, virtually any mention of Crysis would get awebsite attention. If you happened to have exclusive game footage previews, youcould expect your servers to be hammered to high heaven. But now the game hasbeen out for a month, it's not proving to be the smash hit that was expected.After all the hype, why has Crysis sold so badly?

In-console-able

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Crysis. In fact, ithas been winning critical acclaim left, right and centre. IGN gave it 9.4, PCZONE gave it 9.2,and that seems to be the theme. Sure, once you get beyond the novelty of thenanosuit, it's basically a game about sneaking around to find the leastexpected place from which to kill people, rather like Far Cry. But then so arelots of successful first person shooters.

So what has gone wrong? One obvious problem is thephenomenal hardware requirements. When even three graphics cards running inparallel can't cope,you know a game is a little ahead of its time. Imagine spending the £1,200 pluson Tri-SLI and still not being able to play Crysis as intended?

Even more ominous, however, is the fact that for theforeseeable future Crysis is a PC game only. This is also linked to itshardware requirements, as consoles traditionally lag behind the abilities ofPCs.

So whilst it was big news for PC gamers, the much larger consolemarket is not interested. They're scrabbling to find that last remaining copyof Guitar Hero III. Crysis may have been hyped amongst PC users, but it hasn'thad the mainstream media coverage a hit console game receives.

The Unreal deal

Which brings us to the other surprising loser at the retailoutlet - Unreal Tournament 3 - although its lack of success can be put down torather different factors than Crysis. UT3 is not a major graphics resource hog.A single high-end 3D card should be perfectly sufficient to play it at 1,920 x1,200 with high quality settings on your prized 24in TFT.

You do have to question its entire existence, though. Theoriginal Unreal Tournament was an absolute classic. It was the first game toembrace the new era of network play wholeheartedly, and jettison any pretenceof having a plot for single players. Sure, there was still an extensivesingle-player campaign - but it felt more like training to keep you sharp forthe next time you were on a LAN with your mates.

Unfortunately, UT3 hasn't significantly moved on from there,other than graphically.

I'd place Unreal Tournament second only to Counter Strike inthe classic LAN top ten of all time. So the same game with better graphics andphysics doesn't sound like such a bad idea. After all, CS: Source could hardlybe called unsuccessful. Those who have been gaming less than ten years mightnot have played the original Unreal Tournament anyway.

But compared to the humorous gameplay of Team Fortress 2 orthe life-sapping immersiveness of a MMORPG like World of Warcraft, UT3 mustseem decidedly old school. No wonder it's not selling in buckets.

At least UT3 is already available on PS3 and will be comingout for Xbox360. But a console has never been the best thing to play deathmatchFPS games on - there just isn't the control or responsiveness. I can't see itcompeting with more story-led titles like Assassin's Creed.

So Crysis aimed so high it has managed to shoot itself inthe foot, and UT3 is like the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre - bettereffects, but ultimately pointless.

In a market which is dominated by consoles,focusing on what's best for PC gamers alone might not make the most successfulPC game. After all, the number two PC game in November was Call of Duty 4 - butit was the number one console game as well.