Due out this fall, Crysis Warhead will arrive exclusively on PCs and is the first title to be developed by Crytek's Budapest studio. The game is said to run on "a new, enhanced and optimized version" of CryENGINE 2, the technology that powered the original.

The game's status as a PC exclusive comes as a bit of a shock, considering that Crytek recently commented it would be moving away from PC-only development due to piracy. "I believe we won't have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future," Crytek president Cevat Yerli said then. "Similar games [to Crysis] on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more."

Expanding on the story of the original, Warhead follows Sergeant "Psycho" Sykes as he tackles the other side of the island during the time of the first game. Said to pack more weapons, new vehicles and new multiplayer content, the title carries the tagline of "Maximum freedom, maximum explosions and maximum Psycho!"

On its official forums, Crytek revealed that Warhead was the "main reason" behind the cancellation of future Crysis patches. The entire statement follows:

As you know, it was a very hard decision for us to cancel Patch 1.3, but in the end it was important we shift our focus to some of the new and exciting things we are doing with Crysis Warhead. We have a lot of great content planned for the community and as we get closer to launch, we'll be sharing a lot of details of what we are working on behind the scenes. This was the main reason behind the cancellation of the patch and while piracy was and continues to be an issue with Crysis, it did not have any role in our decision to cancel this patch.

We also want to make sure you all know that we are not ending our support of Crysis. We still have www.crymod.com, our official modding portal, up and running - a great meeting place not only for modders, but also for all who are interested in playing new, custom content. In addition we have plans to continue updating the CryENGINE2 documentation and video tutorials frequently.

And of course, your dedicated community management teams are still here and active in our official forums and fansite forums.

The important point is that we are not giving up on our current community and we hope that the announcement today pleased you. Stay tuned for more information on Crysis Warhead... there is a lot more to come!