Crytek Going Totally Free-to-Play in Five Years
Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has made it clear the developer would be focusing on free-to-play games in the future, but recently revealed he wants to transition completely to the FTP model in a few years.
Speaking with Venture Beat, Yerlli discussed how Crytek will transform its business model and games to fit the free-to-play format. “We decided five or six years ago that we want to marry the quality of triple-A games with the business model of free-to-play,” Yerli said. “And out of that position, Gface and Warface were born. And at that time, we decided some other games, in some of our other studios, would head in this direction. But we kept pushing the quality bar higher on our console business, which is the main dominating business for the Western world, but we are observing, plainly — and we see this already with Warface — that the free-to-play market is on the rise. I think over the next two to three years, free-to-play is going to rival retail with quality games like Warface."
While Warface, Crytek's first FTP title, is looming on the horizon, the developer still has some console games in the works. “So we have quite a few console titles in our pipeline that are [traditional retail games] while we investigate free-to-play on consoles,” said Yerli. “But our primary goal is to make triple-A free-to-play games for the world market and transition entirely to that.” Yerli expects the shift to occur in the next 2-5 years, as the market becomes more open to abandoning the default retail format.
What do you think of Crytek's plans? Do you think going free-to-play is the way to go?