EA and CryTek have announced that Crysis Warhead will ship on September 12th in Europe and four days later in North America. Pre-orders are now also active on EA store, though the US price of $24.95 does NOT translate well here in the UK with £19.95 being significantly more expensive. Chances are pre-ordering a boxed copy will be much cheaper for us Brits.

"We think Crysis Warhead is going to offer a tremendous experience to a wide range of gamers," said Cevat Yerli, CEO and President of Crytek. "Fans of Crysis are going to enjoy more of the open-ended gameplay, cutting-edge visuals and huge, epic battles from the first game, while also finally finding out what kind of havoc Psycho was wreaking on the other side of the island.

At the same time, we designed Warhead to be more accessible for gamers new to the Crysis franchise. It is a game with a story that can stand on its own, it has been optimized to run better on a wider range of PCs, and we are introducing Crysis Wars®, a tailor-made experience for multiplayer gamers within the Crysis universe – all at a great value."

Crysis Wars features three multiplayer modes, including TeamInstantAction, a new match type that mixes fast-paced action in a team-based environment, in addition to the insanely frenetic gameplay style of InstantAction and the hardcore team-based PowerStruggle, both of which return from Crysis. The game will include 21 maps, six new maps for TeamInstantAction and InstantAction, and one for PowerStruggle and Crytek will also have a support team dedicated to meeting the needs of the Crysis Wars community.