Crytek has released a free, festive multiplayer map pack for Crysis today. The five-level "Crysis Tournament Mappack" includes three power struggle maps (Desolation, Crossroads, Training) and two instant action levels (Excavation, Terminal). Both the two instant action and three power struggle maps have been tested over several weeks and are optimized for competitive gamelay, but also provide a valid size for public gaming. Quite a few of the trusted server providers of Crysis have already set up multiple servers that are running the map pack.

Crysis fans will have to wait a little longer for the patch #1 to be released. Yesterday an official statement in the Crysis forums, revealed that Crytek's and EA's QA departments are making good progress on the patch, but depending on the feedback it will be released sometime in January 2008. The reason given for the delay is "due to heavy technical issues that appeared right before the patch was declared final". Some of the major changes that will be fixed with Patch #1 are: memory leaks and potential crashes, improved SLI / Crossfire support and performance and improved overall rendering performance (DX9 and DX10). Crytek also said that it is working on Patch #2 for Crysis simultaneously.

Crytek recently announced that it is launching a collaboration with Hochschule Darmstadt. The Frankfurt-based studio will license the CryEngine 2 to the school and also provide lectures on computer animation, engine technology and game concepts and design. This should allow students to work with a state-of-the-art game development package and help them realize their own development ideas. Hochschule Darmstadt's goal is to be a training and research facility in the field of interactive entertainment for the Rhein-Main-District. Students will also be able to use the CryEngine to learn lessons about cinematography. All of this will complement the fields of "Digital Media" and "Games and Animation" in addition to the related fields of "Video Production," "Sound Technology" and "Interactive Media."

In an interview with Crysis (PC) fansite inCrysis, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli revealed the first patch for its recently released visually intense shooter Crysis would be coming within 14 days. "We are collecting up all the user feedback now and planning patches that will address as much as possible as fast as possible," Yerli told inCrysis. "The first patch will be out in 7-14 days." NVIDIA VP Roy Taylor also added some promising information on the updates concerning performance issues due to the game's steep system requirements. "Performance will improve, almost with every single driver drop and patch of the game," Taylor wrote. "Literally every day and week we keep working on the drivers we can see improvements."

DailyTech has made inquiries about what other big developers and Microsoft itself think of DirectX 10.1. Expected to be rolled out with Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista Service Pack 1, "DX10.1 is an incremental update that won't affect any games or gamers in the near future." said senior global director of Microsoft games on Windows, Kevin Unangst. Microsoft isn't the only developer downplaying DirectX 10.1. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, states, "We pride ourselves on being the first to adopt any important new technology that can improve our games so you would expect us to get with DX10.1 right away but we've looked at it and there's just nothing in it important enough to make it needed. So we have no plans to use it at all, not even in the future." NVIDIA also has a response for AMD's DirectX 10.1 support, a feature of AMD's new HD 3800 series that the company has been rather vocal about. NVIDIA's latest guidance describes DirectX 10.1 as "a minor extension of DirectX 10 that makes a few optional features in DirectX 10 mandatory". NVIDIA's corporate roadmap details plans to include DirectX 10.1 in its ninth-generation GPU architecture, codenamed D9. However, the first D9 processors will not debut until next year.

After much anticipation from the public on the Crysis single player demo, Crytek has officially announced that the demo will be delayed to October 26, 2007 in order to be able to release the full game on November 16th.

Cevat Yerli, President and CEO of Crytek says:

"First, I am sorry for the bad news - the Crysis single player demo will now be available everywhere on October 26th, 2007. We are taking some extra time to make sure you that you have an amazing experience but also we did not want to risk the release date of Crysis at this stage. To get the game into your hands by November the 16th, we had to make this call"