From the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek
Crytek was founded by the Yerli brothers in 1999 in Coburg, Germany. Its history starts with the ECTS 2000. It was there that Crytek impressed big publishers with their tech demo at the NVIDIA booth. They continued releasing demos over the years of a game called X-Isle (which evolved into Far Cry). On May 2, 2002, Crytek announced the game engine CryEngine.
In 2003, Crytek attended the Game Developers Conference, where they showcased their new engine and its technology. "We've got awesome demonstrations planned which will showcase the very latest CryEngine technology, including Tools (CryEDIT, Exporters), Visuals (Polybump, Lighting & Shadows), Audio (Dynamic Music with full Dolby Digital 5.1 support), A.I. (Easy to Script) and Physics (Rope, Rag Doll, Liquid) plus the uniquely rendering power of the CryEngine."[4]
Also in 2003, Crytek was at ECTS again, where Far Cry was awarded "Best PC Game". In the same month, Crytek modified CryEngine to be optimized for AMD64.
Also an old article: http://au.gamespot.com/pc/action/crysis/news.html?sid=6153457&mode=previews
:)