First things first. Read slowly so you get it the first time. Crytek is not owned be EA. EA is publishing the games. EA's logo feces will be plastered all over the game but will have little, if anything, to do with development.
Now, I have to say that some of you don't know a damn thing about what your preaching. It's no secret that as new technology has been developed, it has been more expensive to produce a game. Still, one of the coolest thing coming from all of this is better creation tools. That, more than anything, is where the money is at and going. You also must keep in mind the powerful game play engines like CryEngine 2 (whats behind Crysis there) are not design for exclusive use in one game. They will get more mileage out of it through addons, licensing, etc. Think about how many times BF2's engine has been recycled at this point. Three addons and another new game coming soon. Valve's Source engine is an excellent example of the same thing. Source is behind a huge number of games. You also have to keep in mind that Crysis is more than just a new game. It's going to be a technology demo for DX10 and because of that, every bell and whistle that can be used will be used. What everyone seems to be ignoring is that despite all the goodies, Crysis will be quite scalable. Representatives at E3 (yup ladies, I was there) said if you have no trouble running BF2 a decent settings, Crysis will be the same. An X800 will do that and if you look in the right place, you can nab one up for about $100.
Many modern games engines (Monolith's engine, Source, the Doom 3 engine, and to a small extent, BF2's) are designed to be scalable. Thus the people that have the hardware get all the bells and whistles, the mid range guys (many enthusiasts) get a decent balance, and the low end guys (most people, actually) get to at least play. Everyone will have to upgrade sooner or later. If you know what your doing, you can cobble together quite a nice rig for very little buck. And people, the world doesn't stop and wait for you to upgrade. If the 80% of the gaming population that doesn't have a job (yet does all the bitching) would bother to work for a few weeks, they'd be happy with the payoff that effort afforded them. I've busted my ass and now I run what was quite a high end machine. If you can't be bothered to keep up, go buy a console. PC gaming is, in my opinion, better. But you have to be willing to pay the price it costs to stay in the pool.
Lastly, I'll say this about everyone touting on and on about the how much Crysis may cost. Far Cry, at its launch, sported one of the most power game engines at the time. In one patch, they added support for a basic form of HDR and were the first to do so. The capabilities, though never fully taken advantage of, were greater than that of Doom3 and the revision of the Source engine that was around then. And what do it cost the day it hit the shelves? Lined up against a wall of $50 titles lacking a hint of the tech behind Far Cry, it was priced at $30. Bargain bin prices on launch day. That's fairly unheard of now. Crysis will likely cost $50. But I can easily say that it won't be $70+ or whatever crazy figure people want to imagine.
