When Crytek finally shipped in 2007 it came about a year behind schedule and demanded a high-end machine. When Crysis Warhead shipped about a year later, Crytek delivered a follow-up on schedule and it actually ran better on existing hardware than its predecessor. How did the company do that? Producer Bernd Diemer gave a presentation at GDC to explain the hard lessons that Crytek learned with making Crysis, and how developers can use that info to produce better games.

Crysis Warhead was a challenging product in a number of ways. For example, a newly formed studio, Crytek Budapest, built the single-player campaign. To have a new team establish itself and build a game at the same time is always challenging. Meanwhile, the multiplayer was built by Crytek Frankfurt, which meant that the company had to timeshare critical programmers and developers and carefully integrate the product. However, Diemer noted that having one team on single-player and another on multiplayer created a healthy competition between the two studios, as they raced to completion.