in the future? like when? another 20 years?
crysis 1 isnt yet playable on max settings. so we should wait for another 10 years to play at on max settings?
this is just stupid.
but luckily there is only 1 stupid company like that and that is Crytek.
First of all, how much do you have to wait is irrelevant. Crysis 1 released
3 years ago and is still the best looking game. So yes it's more than justifiable if it still needs a better card to play it on max settings. Warhead plays much better and there, I will admit that Critek has not done well in not patching the original Crysis to take advantage of newer cards or multiGPU setups as much as with Warhead. But they've done so with Warhead, so it's a 50/50 good/bad situation. If it takes 10 years for games to catch up to Crysis' levels, yes, it's going to be just as justifiable as it is now if GPUs can't max it out.
It's not Crytek's fault if GPU development has slowed down so much. It's taken 4 years to release 2 true generations* and it's been just a ~50% improvement with each new generation, instead of the 100% increase we were all used to. When Crytek was developing Crysis they were thinking about a -until then- normal evolution and by now they were expecting about a performance level where a GTX480 would be a mainstream/performance part. Also by the time that Crysis was released the GTX2xx and HD4xxx cards should have been out, instead of the 8800GT/HD3xxx.
*yes! your card has 4 years. Mine which is already 3 years old too is not faster than yours, and it was high-end when I bought it. I don't know how long have you been playing PC games, but try taking a 2002 card and playing any graphically stunning 2005 game. Best of luck, and that's 3 years not 4. FYI it took as many or more GPU generations to play Unreal maxed out, or Doom3, or many many others and even Half-Life1/2. The difference is that at that time we had a card every year and the new ones were twice as fast. More so it was usual for the new midrange card to surpass the 1 year old high-end card. i.e 6600GT vs FX59xx/9700/9800 Pro, 7600GT vs 6800 Ultra... And now? The best deal on midrange is HD5770 which costs more than previous generation high end cards and is significantly slower. And let's not talk about previous gen either...
EDIT: Until my current card I have owned whichever was the fastest card on every single generation (sometimes having to buy 2 cards in same year) and I did so, because that was the only way to play MOST games at max settings. Now with my 3 year old card I can play every game except 2-3 at max settings. It's not Crysis that asks for too much, it's the all other watered down crappy console ports which have changed the landscape.