Crytek wants to go all-in with free-to-play titles, will be there in a few years time

Crytek, the developer behind Crysis are no stranger to wanting to push free-to-play (F2P) titles, but it looks like we should expect the entire company to shift over to F2P titles in the next 3-5 years. Company CEO, Cevat Yerli told VentureBeat last week:

We decided five or six years ago that we want to marry the quality of triple-A games with the business model of free-to-play, and out of that position, Gface and Warface were born. And at that time, we decided some other games, in some of our other studios, would head in this direction.

At the moment, F2P titles aren't anything to really write home about - sure, there are some great ones - but they don't compete with the likes of the big AAA games. Crytek on the other hand, is willing to throw big money at F2P titles, with production budgets of between $10 million and $30 million in order to help them actually compete on the AAA playing field.

Yerli stated that Crytek still have "quite a few" traditional games coming out in the next couple of years, while the company continues to look into the F2P model. Crytek hope to move away from full-priced retail games and into the free-to-play model in as little as three-to-five years, depending on how the F2P technology moves.

The Crytek CEO says this shift will see them move from the traditional game developer we see them as now, into more of a Valve-like company with their own Steam-like service that pushes freemium games, whether they're from other studios, or in-house projects.