The folks at Crytek aren't afraid to talk next gen graphical smack. While sitting down to go over the future of online gaming, multiplayer and how to market it with VentureBeat, the topic of the Unreal Engine 4 came up. Crytek Managing Editor Cervat Yerli didn't mind pulling punches from the start:
"The only thing I can say is that CryEngine 3 already exists at the quality of Unreal Engine 4. It already exists for three years now. You can go back three years ago to the GDC videos. What we put out there is pretty much what Unreal Engine 4 put out now. And what many others are doing now too."
Instead of numbering the next release of CryEngine, Yerli corrected himself, the future iterations would all share the same CryEngine title. The particle physics and lighting shifts that Unreal demonstrated last week are " what we were seeing three years ago" at the Crytek studios. Which are undoubtedly big words for the developer, whose Crysis 3 comes out next February.
But to further drive home the differences in the graphics engines, Yerli compared the two between Androids and iPhones ("One feels choppy, another feels better") which may be the least subtle backhanded compliment ever printed.
Maybe all of this isn't just a constant jab at Epic Games? Yerli does discuss how others are just starting to get into next-gen graphics:
"Some other competitors, when they started from scratch five years ago, they of course started from scratch with better ideas. Not a better idea than us, but a better idea than Epic. So in productivity and efficiency, it's something where we claim we're the fastest toolkit around. Because we're 100 percent real-time. We're the only engine that is 100 percent real-time. Look at our competitors and you will feel that every time they change a light or a shadow, it computes for hours. In our case, the lighting is real-time."
Or...maybe Crytek really just hate Epic Games. Oh well, at least we know the next gen console war will have some amusing players when it comes to whose particles are better lit.