Crytek may go bankrupt

That's because EA mandated all their internal engines were replaced by Renderware when they bought Criterion, and as a result lost a lot of talented people, had virtually every game released that year delayed, and/or sub standard.

Wow, I had no idea that happened. Any real articles about it?
 
For what?

You don't buy a company for that. You can simply license the IP.

If you want lifetime exclusivity, licensing isn't enough.

I guess Microsoft saw Ryse as a potential Halo replacement. The problem is that the Yerli brothers saw it too and had probably planned to do some F2P bullshit around it.
 
I was initially very skeptical about Ryse, but it turned out to be a decent game. Certainly nowhere near Halo or even Gears level though. I think a Ryse 2 makes sense, but beyond that I'm not sure how much you could milk the IP.

I mean really, what are you going to do? Ryse 6 - Great Grandson of Rome?
 
I was initially very skeptical about Ryse, but it turned out to be a decent game. Certainly nowhere near Halo or even Gears level though. I think a Ryse 2 makes sense, but beyond that I'm not sure how much you could milk the IP.

I mean really, what are you going to do? Ryse 6 - Great Grandson of Rome?

Well you could probably do something like Assassin's Creed but based on the Roman Empire and their quests?
 
Do a prequel, with an ancestor of his, set during the time of The Punic Wars. Lots of great story lines, a great setup for varied combat, even sea battles, and eventually (I'd take my time and release several games set during that long period) you get combat featuring elephants.

There are other advantages, such as showing cultures that doesn't get featured often.
 
I was initially very skeptical about Ryse, but it turned out to be a decent game. Certainly nowhere near Halo or even Gears level though. I think a Ryse 2 makes sense, but beyond that I'm not sure how much you could milk the IP.

I mean really, what are you going to do? Ryse 6 - Great Grandson of Rome?

Take the rejected Gladiator 2 script. ;)

tldr: the gods make him immortal and he fights wars throughout history to present day. Just imagine the QTE-ish cinematic gun fights.

---

At some point they can make him Dom in Gears of War.

... for reasons. :runaway:
 
Found this at the Polycount forums:

Code:
              Revenue    Net income/loss 
2012	  48,938    -9,424
2011	  34,464    -8,215
2010	  21,554    -21,015
2009	  19,954    -2,933
2008	  14,732    -3,810
2007	  18,010     2,052
2006	  10,373     0,417
2005       6,341     0,200
2004       3,264     0,245
2003       3,143    -0,371

Basically Crytek has been making serious losses for quite a few years now. Some people there believed that it was tied with their transition to consoles but I think they're wrong. Profits must have been shrinking and that prompted their decision to set up another "leg" by expanding to other platforms - but it came a bit late and didn't really work out.

Blaming Ryse may not be that much wrong either. I'm not sure how complete the X360 game was before MS supposedly demanded taking it away from the Budapest studio - but it's reasonable to assume that quite a lot of money has already been spent on that version. We can only guess without knowing about the contract, but Crytek probably had to spend some of its own money on the X1 title; at least I don't think it's plausible that MS was willing to just write off that investment.

And ultimately it just comes down to not releasing enough AA games with good sales, compared to the large staff they've been maintaining. Management issues must also be a big factor; from the word around here, the Budapest studio has been spending a lot of money (expensive office space and equipment), and I imagine all the others weren't holding back either. Feels like a bit of overconfidence in the profitability of every title they develop. Studios should earn that level of trust with at least one solid product; although AFAIK Crytek Budapest has made Crysis Warhead and that was supposedly a nice success...
 
I still dont see it being Ryse's fault. Im sure Ms footed the extra money needed to switch platforms.
The bottom line is they have released only 4 retail titles in the last decade. Crysis 1,2,3 and Ryse. They have several studios (5+) under their belt that all get paid regardless of their actual output. Not counting Warface the only branch of the studio actually releasing games is frankfurt. Im sure they have a team dedicated to cryengine that isnt doing well in adoption. Paying over 800 people every month while only producing 4 AAA games in 10 years is the problem not one exclusive launch title that actually sold well. Im sure unnecesary spending on unneeded things had a part to play as well.
 
As far as Crytech is awesome in graphic I kind of think their game is still just a bit above avarage. Hope they can still go for it.
 
I think, technically, Crytek is already bankrupt. If they can't afford to pay wages then they've crossed the line already.

It's crazy that they thought they could sustain such a large development pool when they mainly produce glorified tech demos that have a niche market at best.

Sony should get in there and get the Timespillters IP before it all gets sold off to obscure VC's looking for a quick profit.
 
If you want lifetime exclusivity, licensing isn't enough.

I guess Microsoft saw Ryse as a potential Halo replacement. The problem is that the Yerli brothers saw it too and had probably planned to do some F2P bullshit around it.

Who cares about lifetime exclusivity?

You buy the company then you are forced to continually upgrade it and maintain it. All for the benefit for of your few first party developers?

I think it would more advantageous for MS to buy Crytek and then package the engine in with the suite of tools and offered the suite with every XB1 dev kit. Use Unity for small projects use Crytek for bigger more AAA like projects.

Every time you release next gen hardware, you release a next gen engine.
 
I wouldn't make that call without knowing the engine really well. CryEngine may be a pig to work with in many ways and debs may want to use something else. No point investing in CryEngine if no-one wants it. CryEngine would only make sense to me as a purchase if it was already proven and valuable. And incidentally no-one wants a platform-exclusive engine anyway! So MS would be saddled with operating CryEngine to work with PC and PS4 and whatever. If they keep it platform exclusive, it'll be a tiny niche engine not worth the money.
 
As I said before in thread I yet have to see any convincing evidence that CryEngine would be better for MS than their own proprietary engines or UE4.
 
I dont think Ms needs cryengine either really. I do think it produces great results. I think alot of games released so far this gen could have really benefited from its use. Thief would have looked much better with Cryengine. Take Evolve it looks great. Im not sure the reason for lack of adoption. Could be difficult to use or Crytek could be terrible at customer support. You cant really argue with the end results of the engine when used properly. There are not many better looking games than the Crysis series and Ryse.
I know alot of people hound Crytek about the gameplay side of things, but I really enjoyed Crysis 1,2 & 3 as well as Ryse. Hopefully Crytek can save themselves by closing the studios that are not pulling their weight. They do have Homefront 2 and Hunt releasing in the coming year. Speaking of maybe they should drop the F2P idea with Hunt and go retail to earn some cash. One last thing people want them to go back to Pc only games. Piracy will continue to make it extremely hard to make money on a Pc only title. Yes they did great sales with the original Crysis, but they still lost money they could have made. They had more copies of Crysis stolen than copies they actually sold.
 
I dont think Ms needs cryengine either really. I do think it produces great results. I think alot of games released so far this gen could have really benefited from its use. Thief would have looked much better with Cryengine. Take Evolve it looks great. Im not sure the reason for lack of adoption. Could be difficult to use or Crytek could be terrible at customer support. You cant really argue with the end results of the engine when used properly. There are not many better looking games than the Crysis series and Ryse.
I know alot of people hound Crytek about the gameplay side of things, but I really enjoyed Crysis 1,2 & 3 as well as Ryse. Hopefully Crytek can save themselves by closing the studios that are not pulling their weight. They do have Homefront 2 and Hunt releasing in the coming year. Speaking of maybe they should drop the F2P idea with Hunt and go retail to earn some cash. One last thing people want them to go back to Pc only games. Piracy will continue to make it extremely hard to make money on a Pc only title. Yes they did great sales with the original Crysis, but they still lost money they could have made. They had more copies of Crysis stolen than copies they actually sold.

Arkham Knight also looks great and it uses UE3. Enemy Front uses Cryengine and looks like utter garbage. Thief just looks dull, kinda silly and samey all the way through. Cryengine simply would have made it look a different kind of dull, silly and samey. Visuals were the least of the game's problems anyway.
 
Arkham Knight also looks great and it uses UE3. Enemy Front uses Cryengine and looks like utter garbage. Thief just looks dull, kinda silly and samey all the way through. Cryengine simply would have made it look a different kind of dull, silly and samey. Visuals were the least of the game's problems anyway.

Technical quality != image quality which is very unfortunate IMO :(
 
War Face was just opened in Beta on Steam and it's a DX9 low quality (for CE) game using old engine version. Targetting mass market rather than performance PCs obviously, but not sure how this is going to help them out.
 
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