Crytek loves graphics. Any idiot can see that. However, the studio’s fetish for visuals above all else may be deeper than previously thought, as CEO Cevat Yerli reveals his team has been wanting new hardware since the original Crysis, and is chomping at the bit for a new generation.
“We’ve been considering the next generation and what it will likely consist of for many years now, so everything we did in CryEngine 3 has been with an eye on future hardware architectures,” he said. “Some recently advertised ‘next-gen’ features in other middleware are running in an unplayable tech demo on a supercomputer. But a bunch of these same features are available right now, in the current generation, in Crysis 2!
“We’ve been waiting for the next generation of consoles since we released Crysis 1, as the high end PC features we invented back then will be pretty standard on next-gen consoles, we believe.”
I don’t know. Can the majority of developers afford a new generation of consoles? Studios are already struggling with the mounting development costs of this generation, let alone a brand new one. Some of the high-end companies may be begging for new hardware, but I’ve got a feeling the majority of the industry is quite comfortable sticking with this one for a while.
