...how this turned into a screed about OpenGL, with lots of people who haven't got a clue what they're talking about sounding off and screaming at each other while a few voices of reason try and calm them down. But here's a little perspective.

The governing body for OpenGL was recently transitioned from the OpenGL ARB to the fairly well-known Khronos standards body. They've long directed the development of OpenGL ES, the subset / fork of OpenGL optimized for embedded systems, and from all appearances they are making a sincere effort to bring OpenGL to a level competitive with Direct3D. Two new revisions of the API are in development with assistance from major players in the industry. One seeks to transition many internal aspects of OpenGL from an essentially state-based system to a more object-based system; the other will build upon this, bringing instanced rendering, geometry shaders, and other Direct3D 10-level features to OpenGL. The first, code-named Longs Peak, is scheduled to be ready for consumption this summer. The second, Mt. Evans, should be ready closer to October. A proper SDK has also quietly been worked upon, though not too many announcements have been made about this yet.

OpenGL (or its open source workalike Mesa) is the standard hardware rendering interface on Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. It has been used for all manner of purposes, from CAD software to playing Quake on a cell phone to rendering graphics for Pixar films. There is too much riding on OpenGL for it to go away. The API's future is bright. If it achieves feature parity with DirectX 10 (which Microsoft seems intent on keeping a fairly set standard relative to prior revisions of the API), it will be an appealing option for cross-platform game developers. The Wii, Gamecube, and Playstation 3 all support at least OpenGL ES. And much as Microsoft wants everyone to use Direct3D, it has to support OpenGL because to do otherwise would be a public image disaster and suicidal folly.

APIs are neither negative nor positive by nature, but I'm personally rooting for OpenGL.

As for Crysis: My skepticism at the system requirements is softened more and more by what appear to be some really good ideas, as well as the fact that Far Cry was as fine a debut from a game studio as I've seen. Jury's out on whether happy thoughts are really warranted yet, but the whole package looks pretty good...