14 DAY TRIAL // Crytek repeatedly denied intention to port their highly anticipated sci-fi shooter Crysis to Xbox 360 once PC development is complete early next year. Apparently, the game makes extensive use of Microsoft's DirectX 10 API which is a definite novelty to the console's architecture. Although Xbox 360 has an advanced DX9 version built in, questions arise if it could be upgraded or not.
First to give an answer was the Dutch based Xbox 360 fansite with claims from ATI that a DirectX upgrade is possible via patch. It would undoubtedly be a beneficial move for Microsoft, to push cross platform development, as the 360 certainly has the required raw power. With XNA and cross over programming, it can lean to a lot of DX10 games coming to console, especially when Microsoft is expanding Live support.
Unfortunately, these suppositions proved to be false as ATI was quick to dispel the rumors: "Xbox 360 cannot run DX10, and confirmed what I said earlier about the extended functionality. The Xbox 360 has unique features including memory export that can enable DX10-class functionality such as stream-out," said an ATI spokesperson. "From what we're hearing, Crysis will support DX9 with some sort of use for DX10 features. It's likely that those DX10 visuals can be replicated on the Xbox 360, but it can't be properly called DX10."
It makes perfect sense since Crytek themselves have been discussing a Crysis port to Xbox 360, although it's not in production just yet. All of their public appearances have been running under DX9 thus with some tweaking and a bit of optimization, fans might enjoy the console port next spring, even without DX10 support.