Devs and hardware boys get cosy

THE LATEST development video to come out of Crytek is a fascinating example as to just how far gaming and hardware marketing have come in the last few years.

You can see the video for yourself here (it's 65 megs).

It features Crytek's CEO, Cervat Yerli, sitting on a chair, explaining how wonderful Nvidia, Microsoft and Intel have been to the studio, and telling the world how technology from each of these giants goes into making upcoming hit Crysis much more special than it otherwise could have been.

Intel's vTune and ThreadChecker are crucial to programming the games artificial intelligence to run across dual and quad-core processors. Nvidia's advanced hardware effects mean that blood can be simulated under the skin of a character for advanced rendering. Meanwhile, Vista's Parental Controls mean you can, er, well, choose to stop yourself from playing it. Right.

A few years ago, hardware companies started to realise that hardware wasn't going to sell computers any more - games were. It's why Nvidia has spent such a lot of money on its game development effort, and ditto Intel. In the video, Nvidia proudly proclaims that it has multiple technicians working on the game out of the Crytek labs - so regardless of whether money technically changes hands for the TWIMTBP promotion, which has been a subject of debate here recently, it's clear that some free hired help has got to be, well, helpful to the financial cause that EA is undertaking to get Crysis out the door.

In a bid to manage the spiralling costs of cutting edge game development, it seems that men like Cervat Yerli are reduced to pimping themselves out to whoever can help them get the job done. One can't help but wonder if his game might be better served by spending less time in front of the camera and more time in front of 3DS Max. µ