Frankfurt-based Crytek has reportedly said its next Crysis game will not be named Crysis 4.
Crytek has not entered the pre-production stage, nor has it found any publisher for the game. It is still years off from making the next Crysis game, but Cevat Yerli confirms to Eurogamer in an interview that there will be another Crysis game after Crysis 3. However, there will be a change in the game's name.
"[Crysis 3] is the end of the story of Crysis, but it doesn't mean it's the end of the franchise," he said.
"Prophet started the journey in Crysis 1 with Psycho and Jester and the others. We're bringing those buddies together in Crysis 3 to finish up the story and effectively make sense of the trilogy. We are finalising the story arc of Prophet and concluding in a dramatic way."
"But we are excited about the DNA of Crysis and of the franchise. There can be literally tonnes of titles out there within the franchise. Unlike Far Cry, this time around we feel very flexible about Crysis."
Crytek will have to deal with a number of other factors while developing the next Crysis. The main factor will be its platform, with rumors doing the rounds of the next-generation gaming consoles.
"I wouldn't name it Crysis 4 at this stage because it would be misleading. We want to finalise Prophet's story and Crysis 4 would imply the story just moves on."
If Crytek were to follow the development cycle they followed for Crysis 2 and Crysis 3, they should have started with the pre-production of the game already.
"Normally in this time right now we would already have pre-production going on, but because we want to make this something much more radical and new we are looking at it as a bit more of a long term thing. It's too early to talk about it for these reasons."
Yerli has revealed that Free To Play games will dominate the gaming industry in the coming years and after Crysis 3 and Homefront 2 for THQ, "it will only make Free To Play games."
"The truth is much more complicated," he said. "There's a transformation period for the industry. I believe Free To Play is our inevitable future. I believe there are Free To Play titles out there that can be story-telling, co-operative with your friends and competitive with your friends. It's all possible. The business model is independent from the way you design games. It's a very important thing. People always make these things dependent, but it's actually completely independent."
"The most important aspect is there is a psychological transformation of the customers and the publishers that has to happen before everything is Free To Play on every platform," he said. "We are promoting these steps with other titles we're doing right now."
"We do have a plan for a Free To Play version of Crysis, but how this looks and when this will be done, whether this is the next one or the next next one, is to be decided."
"But we have a very clear picture of how this will look in a transitional period where retail and free-to-play can coexist for one title."
Crysis 3 will be released in February 2013 on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.