Crytek Wants To Create Triple-A Free-To-Play Games

Crytek  has expressed the desire to produce quality free-to-play games. CEO Cevat Yerli discussed this new direction for the company in a recent interview with Now Gamer.

“…what I think we’re really trying to do now – as an initiative going forward – is to try and increase the quality of the free-to-play market.”

This is a huge deal coming from a company that pumped out a game whose graphical prowess trumped most PCs at the time of its release. More importantly, it was a great game. Anyone who has delved into the free-to-play market in its current state knows that quality is a bit of a mixed bag mostly dominated by sub-par MMORPGs. Although the amount of free games out there can only be considered a positive thing, I’m sure we’d all like to see a few more games like Vindictus and Team Fortress 2 along with less games like Elf Online.

Yerli also discussed Crytek’s reaction to the success of cloud gaming services like Onlive and Gaikai. We won’t be seeing any Crytek games on those services any time soon, as he clarifies that putting free-to-play games on a such services would be “prohibitively expensive.” This is reasonable considering the costs of running servers that can stream games. However, Yerli did state that this decision could be reconsidered if some sort of free-to-play system were introduced to cloud gaming.

“But if cloud gaming changes to support the free-to-play model, then I think that is going to be very interesting for gamers around the world. So for those companies who are trying to replace the retail models, they are doing the first steps on this, to pave the way for next-generation cloud gaming and I think that should be applauded.”

I’ll drink to that, good sir. So, readers, what other developers/publishers would you like to see tackle the free-to-play market?

Source: NowGamer