Crytek said on Tuesday that the PC version of its free-to-play first-person-shooter Warface is going live on October 21. The Xbox 360 version won't become available until next year, and while the game will still be free-to-play, Xbox Live Gold will be a requirement, costing gamers $50 per year to play. The PC version runs on CryEngine 3 and is being developed at the company's Kiev studio.
"We know that free-to-play games have a bad image," Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said last year while defending the game's F2P mode. "They have a bad reputation; 'it's pay to win, it's low quality.' I completely get that, but we are making free-to-play that's high quality. It's CryEngine 3; it's a big investment."
The minimum system requirements supposedly include a dual core CPU from AMD or Intel clocked at 2 GHz, 1.5 GB of RAM, 6 GB of free hard drive space, and a Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 256 MB or AMD Radeon X1950 256 MB GPU. The recommended system specs include an Intel Core2Duo E6-series or Athlon64 X2 6400+ CPU, a Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB or AMD Radeon HD 4830 512 MB GPU, 2 GB of RAM and 6 GB of hard drive space. Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 are required for both sets of specs.
Crytek started beta testing the free-to-play shooter back in January, and then opened the gates to "sneak peek" players in a special preview period in early October. Crytek already launched Warface in China, Korea and Russia, and is launching the game here in the States, Europe and Turkey through its GFACE gamer social network.
Just recently lead producer Joshua Howard fought off criticism regarding the female character skins used in the game, which show exposed waists, cleavage, and proportions that are "anatomically exaggerated." He said these skins were at the request of Russian and Chinese gamers, and designed for their region. These skins will be changed when the game comes to America.
"You get these little differences you have to adjust for," he said. "The idea we were going to come up with one set of female skins across the world was clearly blown out of the water as we started to talk to more of our players and partners from different regions."
Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
