Crytek’s taken more than a few hits over the past year, but the developer isn’t ready to back down yet. Co-founder Avni Yerli still thinks the studio can turn all the bad publicity and damaged reputation around if it can continue to ”make really high quality games”.
Whether it’s always done that in the past is sort of open to question (personally I’d say emphatically not), but perhaps bullish optimism is probably what’s needed at Crytek right now.
“The transition to an online company took much more time than we had anticipated,” Yerli told MCV at Gamescom this month. “This was the biggest cause of the problems. It took longer and cost more than we had anticipated. We now have a framework and a foundation where we can prioritise and move forward with our business plans for 2014 and 15.”
The sale of the promising Homefront reboot and rumours of unpaid staff wages won’t have helped the developer’s reputaion, Yerli admitted, but the team has to press on. “I am sure it has damaged our reputation, but for Crytek it is about focusing on our core competency, which is making really high quality games. When we deliver those games we will hopefully be back on track, and people will see Crytek in the way that it deserves to be seen.”
The next game the studio is working on is a PC version of Xbox One launch title Ryse. Hmm, maybe not the auspicious blockbuster that the studio needs, but who knows? Maybe it will do well. It’s due out later this year.
