In all honesty, it didn’t take a super genius to see this coming. Despite the popularity of titles like Far Cry and Crysis, Crytek have found themselves in trouble after investing lots of money in a game engine that nobody seems to want to use, and poor sales of their new IP ‘Ryse’.
According to German gaming magazine ‘Gamestar’, it has been reported that adoption of the famous engine that powers Crysis and going very poorly, and word on the GDC show floor was that it doesn’t stack well against industry rival Epic’s famous and widespread Unreal engine. This is despite the fact that Cryengine is subjectively one of the most optimised engines out there now, improving to the point where the original photorealistic Crysis eventually saw a release on consoles. This is probably because is sticking with it’s traditional bulk license system, when competitors like Unity and Unreal are opting for more flexible subscription and free to try business models.
On top of that, the company also says that the development and commercial failure of Ryse was disastrous for the company. The game was apparently still largely unfinished months before it’s release, and the company had to hire talent from outside to get the game on shelves in time for the release of Microsoft’s Xbox One console.