Crytek boss Cevat Yerli says it was “inevitable” that Crysis would be released on consoles, but not for any of the reasons you might normally expect.
After a decade as a PC-exclusive developer, Crytek announced at the start of June that it would develop Crysis 2, the sequel to the hit 2007 FPS, for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as the PC platform. The decision wasn’t entirely surprising; although Yerli had previously expressed doubt about the prospects of porting the advanced Crysis to consoles, he had also bemoaned the state of PC gaming as rife with piracy, saying that Crytek was depriving itself of access to a far more important market by not making games for consoles.
But after the Crysis 2 announcement Yerli revealed that money wasn’t the only reason for the decision, nor even the most important one. “It’s a question of more than economics,” he told GameSpot. “At the end of the day we’re paying salaries and we all have to live, but that’s one side of this job. But most importantly and a bit more tangible to us are the families, the nephews, and sons who ask, ‘Why aren’t you going to consoles?’ It’s kind of like bothering people. We’ve been asked a lot in the last three or four years now, ‘When consoles? When consoles? When consoles?’ It was literally inevitable that we would bring it.”
Still, Yerli said Crytek didn’t commit itself to a console version of Crysis 2 until it was sure the game could be done properly. “There was two to three years of technical research and development into consoles before development on Crysis 2 started,” he continued. “We had to make a technological breakthrough before we could commit to those quality bars… We had to make a technical base before we could get into great gameplay, story, settings, etc.”
Nothing like some intensive videogame development to put a smile on the face of a child – or shut him up, as the case may be. Crysis 2 hasn’t been given a release target but it sounds like Yerli and the team have bought themselves a little peace and quiet, at least for awhile.
