CryEngine bosses draw Unreal battle lines

One of the biggest game engine companies in the world has drawn battle lines around the highly-competitive game engine sector, claiming that CryEngine is deservedly gaining interest from existing Unreal Engine developers.

Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is perhaps the most ubiquitous game platform of the present generation – used to build a plethora of console and PC games – but two Crytek bosses claim that their strikingly powerful CryEngine tech provides studios with an increasingly alluring alternative.

CryEngine boss Carl Jones said Crytek was not finding it difficult to lure devs away from UE3 development, telling Develop that the firm has “had a lot of interest from major companies who are thinking about working on the latest editions of their franchise, either using their own tech or other engines”.

He said, “I think a lot of [studios] are looking to expand their horizons and are looking at our engine as the next best step for them. CryEngine gives studios more freedom to develop large, open-area environments and that’s what a lot of studios are looking for these days.”

Jones also told Develop that a number of studios have approached Crytek to discuss their engine, and company CEO Cevat Yerli was keen to outline why.

Said Yerli: “Our engine is achieving things that people thought were not possible on consoles. I would argue that, compared to the competition, our engine is the only one that actually is 100 per cent real-time. And we have a number of technologies that are unique to us due to the patent-pending nature of them.

“The question developers once asked was; ‘how do you build a level?’ I think today the question is more about how developers make worlds.

“If you look at creating fantastic large open worlds, then our engine is the ideal choice. If you want to develop games with small spaces, then you can do that with Unreal Engine 3 – not that I’m saying you can’t do that with CryEngine 3 – it’s just that our engine has been built to create big worlds.

“The reason why I’m saying this is because, well, what gamers want is to play as alternate egos and this is only truly possible with large open worlds to explore.”