Dear Reader:
Crytek talks Wii
Crytek’s CEO and President Cevat Yerli took some time to talk to Game Informer, in which he discussed the Wii.
GI: It’s assumed that if you do console development it’ll be on the most powerful systems – Xbox 360 and PS3. What do you think of Wii?
Yerli: I love the Wii (laughs). When I was at E3 and playtested it, I loved it. I thought about how we could do games for this platform and what kind of games they would be, and what kind of shooters we could do on it, and work it to our own needs here. Yes we’ve had some thoughts, but Crysis is not part of the plan at this stage, but that may change.
We are a company that takes one step at a time, and once we achieve the goal that we want to achieve then we take the next step and see what the next platform we go with next. We did not decide if we’ll do PS3 at all. We have all of the development kits, and we have research going on. We have the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3, we work as researchers and test them, essentially. We have parts of these systems running because there is going to be console development in our company, but if it’s going to be Crysis or not is a step ahead of us. Because if we go to fast we sacrifice quality on PC, and I want to make sure it’s the best PC shooter we can do. With our company our goal is to make it the best shooter of all time. Once we achieve that, our achievement is we do our best and that’s it. Whether we do it our not is to be determined. Once we are there, then we’ll take the next step.
GI: Crytek is known to have made stunningly beautiful games, and while you can sort of experience them on lesser hardware, if you have the quad-SLI setup, and three gigs of RAM and a super fast processor it’s going to look incredible. With looking at what the Wii has under the hood, does that discourage you as a developer?
Yerli: No, not at all, because I think we can make great visuals by different means. Look at the PS2. Some PS2 games still look fabulous. And there are games that are just stylized perfectly. You can achieve anything with every hardware. I think it’s a matter of artistic direction, how you use the limitations. That ultimately is the experience you want to give. The experiences in Crysis drives the art direction. The experience of the frozen environments, the experience of interactivity, then we decide how we want it to come across visually. What do we need to do, how far do we need to go? With the Nintendo Wii the approach will be similar. We have this great controller, we have the limited power of the console, How we can make a confined space or large outdoor level, whatever, how can we make the best out of the controller that’s giving the experience that we want to give? Completely fluid interactivity – how can we do that? I think it would be a completely different approach, and it deserves to be as well. So, if it our decision to make Crysis for Wii, if and I don’t want to be quoted saying we’ll do it. But if – if we would do it, it would have to be a completely optimal version, but it would be great. (laughs)
Thanks to David once again for the heads up!