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Crytek Wants A Piece Of Epic's Pie
German developer Crytek (Crysis, Far Cry) is making a push to license its latest rendering technology, dubbed CryEngine 3, to other developers. Most gamers will recognize the lush jungle vistas the technology is known for, but Crytek president/CEO Cevat Yerli points toward his product's more workflow-oriented advantages.
" [CryEngine 3] is the only game engine solution that enables real-time development and can ensure teams are able to maximise their own creativity, save budget and create greater gaming experiences," boasts Yerli. "Even producers, project managers, and suits will love CryEngine 3!"
Crytek has its work cut out for it in the middleware market, where Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 has dominated the current generation of development. Crytek is touting its promises of support and training for the technology, as that is one area that Epic has caught some flak in the past. However, the fact is that if there's one suite of tools that a programmer, artist, or producer is familiar with, it's Unreal Engine 3. Overcoming that kind of entrenched knowledge base is a daunting task. NCsoft's recently released MMO Aion is one of only a few non-Crytek game on the market that uses any version of CryEngine, though Ubisoft has a perpetual license to use the version used in the original Far Cry.
Nonetheless, it's good to see more competition entering the middleware arena. Previous gaming epochs have seen healthy competition between id Software's tech (dropped off the face of the market due to the Doom 3 engine's quirky limitations and technical difficulty), Criterion's RenderWare (bought by EA and no longer sold to third parties), and Valve's renderers (the Source engine, which powers Half-Life 2, has gotten some traction but is very much Apple to Epic's Microsoft). Perhaps Crytek can inject some new blood into the technical development scene.
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