Future of consoles is free-to-play, says Crytek
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
CEO Cevat Yerli claims Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo wary to go fully digital due to dependence on retail, believes next-gen tablets will "run over" current-gen consoles.
Crysis developer Crytek has offered a projection of where the console industry could be headed in the future. Company CEO Cevat Yerli told CVG that he believes free-to-play is the future, but at present, feels this is the minority belief.
"Why are free-to-play online games not widespread on consoles? You should ask Microsoft and Sony this question," he said. "We see the future of consoles as free-to-play--ideally focussed on free-to-play. That's what I want to see in the future. But unfortunately not everybody shares this vision due to many other reasons."
Yerli explained that Crytek was in discussions with Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo regarding a publishing deal for its new free-to-play shooter Warface, but these partnerships never came to fruition. According to Yerli, these companies depend on the retail business and are wary to go full-on digital. Yerli calls the tussle between digital and retail "the biggest issue in the industry right now."
"Hardware manufacturers are reliant on distribution and retail businesses, and those companies who are not reliant on third-party retail business such as Apple can go 100 percent digital," he said. "They don't have the problem of retailers saying, 'I will not sell your hardware if you do not give me boxed games too'. That is the culprit of the problem."
Yerli later said that he believes there is immediacy to the situation. He claimed next-generation tablet devices will boast technical power near current-generation hardware, making future consoles from Microsoft and Sony needed sooner rather than later.
"I believe firmly that the next-generation of tablets are going to be close to current-generation consoles. So if the next-generation consoles don't ship very soon, the tablets are just going to run over them," he said. "That's very clear. I've believed for about a year now that as soon as tablets can stream on to TVs, then there's no reason why you should buy a console anymore. We're still pushing the tablet game market ourselves, and you'll see both casual and hardcore titles from us."
If the reckoning of industry analysts is to be believed, new consoles from Microsoft and Sony will be on store shelves at the end of next year.
Earlier this month, Yerli revealed that all future Crytek games would boast a free-to-play business model. At the time, he also said packaged goods strategies like downloadable content and premium services are "milking customers to death."
Yerli is not alone in his estimation that the industry's future will be oriented around a free-to-play business model. Last week, Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore said he believes in five to 10 years, all games will be available for free, with users able to purchase content via microtransactions.
Crytek's first free-to-play game--Warface--is in development at the company's Kiev outfit and runs on the CryEngine 3. A military shooter set in the near future, the game claims to offer a cinematic experience with next-gen visuals, artificial intelligence, and physics. It is expected to be released in 2012.
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
388 comments
1 Like The only time I liked getting Nickel and Dimed (more like quarters), is in a ARCADE! When I get a game I want A FULL VERSION with all items able to be UNLOCKED with game play. Not my hard earned cash.
6 Like These types of stories are getting very f****** old. Eddie Makuch, you and the rest of the Gamepsot Staff seem like nice people, so why the hell do you keep posting the opinions of corporate assholes who just wanna butt-rape us gamers with their business strategies and apparent knowledge of what us consumers "really want"?
They think EVERY single gamer in the world has:
1. A lot of money, or more specificaly, credit cards to buy stuff in their pay-to-win and incomplete games, online where you can get hacked and lose all your money, including the money in your bank account. (Maybe I wanna walk into a store and buy a game with CASH. At least if you get robbed you'll only lose the money on you, not your whole life savings, and even you can defend yourself against the robber and avoid losing money altogether.)
2. Huge hard drives and very fast internet to dowload and store 16GB games in it after waiting 45 mins for the 1% in the download progress bar, to show up. (Some people may say discs are dying, but they're much more convienient than digital downloads; They ACTUALLY TAKE physical space, and its not much, they're really thin and can fit anywhere, and you can buy them anywhere, instead of digital downloads, where if you're up to 99% of a 6-day-download and the power goes out, you're screwed and have to start over again. If discs get scratched a bit you can clean them or take them to a specialist, instead of having to download the digital file AGAIN because if it gets corrupted. You can even play frisbee with an old disc that doesnt work or smash it whne you get angry and have nothing to take your anger out on; You cant have that type of fun with a file. Not everybody has fast internet and kick-ass PCs.)
3. The desire to want crappy tablets to REPLACE controllers, where tablets can fall once and get the screen scratched and lose 20% of their sensitivity or even broke, but controllers can fall more than 30 times without even dislocating a button/trigger. (They live in a dream world where a flat, dull touch screen is more enjoyable, ergonomicle and fun than a REAL controller with buttons that are shaped to fit your hands. To play with tablets, you have to put them on a table, your lap or your knees so it feels right or hold it in one hand and play with the other for a semi-awkward feel; with controllers in small or medium size, you can access all buttons easily and at the same time without sacrificing the ability to press the ones on the other side. Nintendo has the right idea with the WiiU controller: instead of a tablet overtaking a controller, its a controller with a touch-screen, so you can use mostly the buttons (for core and standard games, or use the WiiU pro controller) and embraces the touch-screen, creating harmony and an interesting new way to playing.)
4. And lastly, the stupidity to buy every product the copy/paste and follow every order they give you to live your life.
To end this rant, I tell you that you can think my opinion is bull**** as I think of their's, but thats our right as human beings, to express ourselves and be happy in any way we want, AS LONG AS IT NEVER COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS, which is what EA, CApcom and Activision are doing wrong (if they have souls, to be happy in some form).
And the moral: Digital stuff is evil. I'm not saying that someday robots will rule the world, but that someday this digital stuff will end up screwing us even worse than material possesions, and establishing material as the lesser of two evils.
4 Like @DeFiLeDTitan Exactly! not to mention they are far more expensive than the likes of a console or pc of similar spec.
11 Like Cevat Yerli: F2P is the future of gaming.
Onlive: Cloud gaming is the future of gaming.
Apple: No digital download is the future of gaming.
Nintendo: Retail is still our future in gaming.
Microsoft: Kinect is the future of gaming.
Sony: We don't care, we just do whatever works from the first five groups.
Some guy in his mother's basement: PC is the future of gaming.
Gamers: Just make some damn games.
1 Like how about the future of consoles is actually getting a full game at release like it had been until this generation of crooks took hold
3 Like Are games as a business unsustainable as it is now? Are development budgets that high? Will casual crowd keep pouring in money? How can these people be so sure? I am sure these people want to take retail down. But its their own doing. If people start accepting digital distribution as only medium, am sure these people will be terribly happy. Vita is treading a middle path. If people will start accepting download only full games, am sure sony will ditch retail and reduce mem. card prices. Its a delicate balance between retailers and publishers am sure.
"We see the future of consoles as free-to-play--ideally focussed on free-to-play. That's what I want to see in the future" i love it what a ass
well i want good games that are worth my 60$ does not mean im going to get it
i hope he like disappointment.
and i can not see a hardcore player play a FPS on a tablet. WTF is he thinking. Hell trying to play a RPG would be a BI%$H
he need to keep hes mouth shut and stop pissing us off
He can think this but he should have kept for himself because he is dead wrong. Console gaming is currently being destroyed and it will probably be fully destroyed way before it become pay-2-win
3 Like no serious gamers are going to resort to using tablets as their only option. The control schemes alone would drive us crazy.
I remember how the pronouncements that "PC gaming is dead" led to PC games being expelled from retail shelves...first GameStop, the Walmart and now Target. Many of us were left with no options except going digital to get top-flight PC games. Now that Steam is making a killing for Valve, not only does EA want in on the game, but GameStop themselves are slowly bringing PC games back into their stores. Too little, too late, I say, but each person can decide that for themselves.
Unfortunately on the console side, most gamers still don't have connections fast enough to download a 9 GB game in a reasonable time (e.g. less than a day). And I'm still not aware of a way to download a console (the hardware, I mean) into your living room. So yes, the console makers are still heavily reliant on the retailers to push their wares.
1 Like Man,am i sick!How all this "game industry",game press" and new trends of gaming" business is so revolting!It makes my stomach turn around.
4 Like This is all a bloody joke!"EA say this...","Crytek says that....","Gamespot says it's not like that...".Screw all of these guys!THEY are the ones that want things to go that way,dictating new trends and all that crap,and want us to swallow it all nice and easy.Well,if that's the future of gaming,then i have only one thing to say:GO TO HELL!
I''ll stick to old consoles and emulators and the rest of you cattle can go off playing F2P call of duty or whatever it is the next crap that will surface out of this shithole.
2 Like I've said it before and I'll say it again. If gaming goes fully into the F2P model, kiss it goodbye.
When Steam starts to offer more and more F2P, people will love it. After couple of years, they will say "that's my prefer way to buy games".
Crytek , go ahead and make all of your games free-to-play , I'm not interested in them anyways. Crysis was a shallow experience that would've gotten mediocre scores AT BEST had they not relied on their over-realistic graphics. And besides Far Cry that's their only real claim-to-fame.
The 'free to play' concept is similar to tying a string to a bone and throwing it to a dog, and making sure that the dog never gets the bone unless it pays for it. And when it does, you throw a better bone and repeat the process.
Free-to-play means it's pay-to-win. If it isn't, it's called charity.
1 Like Crytek committed a low shot when they blathered about used game futures, and now this.
Hey Crytek: We're on to you, and your BS. Free-to-play games simply attempts to narrow used game markets from a different angle - If they don't sell a game on disc, but instead it's a download and then they milk the customer directly with micro-ripoffs making resale of a Crytek game impossible.
Enough, already. I was sick of this company before, now they make me sick with their assumptions about our intelligence.
3 Like Why do devs and publishers have to just annoy the absolute F*** out of gamers/customers. Stop hating used games thats what DLC is for, to combat used sales in an acceptable way. Stop trying to change the way we get the games and focus on making better games u greedy limp d*** f*** wits!
No one wants free to play BS where every time u wanna do something u gotta fork out more cash, and people will advance faster than others. most people much rather a trip to a store to look through all the games and pay a full price and not have any more hassles and annoyances with microtransactions and sifting through boring poorly set out online stores (like the PS store) to browse games, it sucks waiting for stuff to download, then if the machine breaks down everything's erased at the factory, much rather physical copies, this bloke a bloody goose.
Free to play is just not right for a whole lot of games I mean come on crytek remember how everyone loved crysis that single player game you made, that wouldn't work as free to play, in fact almost no single-player experience would. I'm starting to think EA has a brain washing program it sends all it's devs to that melts their brains until all they can talk about is wider audiences, bigger market share and free2play. (in bioware's case they also seem to have removed the ability to write a decent story or admit their mistakes. sorry couldn't resist)
3 Like Not my future, I doubt It will happen any time soon but I will simply not buy any console that goes this way.
There is a place for free to pay, but for single player games I really don't want a pay to win model. It ruins pacing. It's no fun to be super over or under powered in a game which is what will happen if free to play becomes the norm. For multiplayer games there are ways to make F2P work as evidenced by games like League of Legends. As long as players are paying for things that don't break the game for players that can't buy them I don't care if it is free to play. But pay to win games suck.
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