Farcry - forest, crysis - forest, crysis warhead - forest again. From the developer's perspective, it makes sense to jump into a different setting. They partly failed yeah, but at least they tried rather than being cowards and staying with what they are good at.
About the appeasing the console owners, it was kind of disappointing for the PC owners, but what else would you expect from a PC exclusive developer who makes AAA FPS games? they're not Blizzard to make a game and sell 6 million copies in a matter of weeks(FYI, Crysis sold about 3 million in its entire lifetime), Crytek is an independent developer and has to do something to survive in such a competitive industry. As if the Crysis piracy debacle wasn't a blow enough to crytek.
Its just one single game that went into a different path anyway, Crysis 3 seems bring back the combination of C1 and 2. And then they have Ryse, which has gone multiplatform-next gen and homefront 2, as a fan I'm totally happy with what they're doing