CryEngine has 40 licensees in multiple genres

We'll soon see a number of CryEngine 3 titles in different genres, according to CryEngine's director of global business development, Carl Jones.

"We're up to about 40 licensees now with CryEngine, but we haven’t been able to announce many of them as yet," Jones told told NowGamer

"But we have publishers that have signed up for licenses with CryEngine as well as independent developers so there are some good products on the way."

Jones said CryEngine games"obviously require a certain amount of development time" and weren't ready to be shown yet, but promised "a lot more in the pipeline" and predicted we'd see them over the next year.

"The next game that’s going to be released using CryEngine 3 will be from Illfonic, a game called Nexuiz, which is an arena-based shooter. That’s going to be a downloadable release on consoles. So that’s going to be a really high-end, triple-a experience for anyone that wants to download it from XBLA, PSN or PC. So that will give gamers the first glimpse of something [CryEngine 3-based] outside of Crytek," he said.

The executive said one upcoming title will be "quite different" from what has been done in the past, while another is a sandbox experience playing to CryEngine 3's strengths - likely a shooter, then.

But Jones is certain CryEngine 3 coule be adapted to multiple genres, and indeed, should be, to avoid consumer fatigue.

"We’re very keen to see different products made with our engine. If the gamer is presented with a lot of similar products based on an engine, they start to become frustrated or bored with what’s possible with that technology," he explained.

"By making sure that we have very powerful but generic technology, and tools that allow you to create many different types of game and look to ensure that people will never be in a position where they say: ‘we never want to see another CryEngine game.'"

Jones praised DICE's Frostbite engine fot its adaptability, commenting that it handles racers beautifully on top of shooters. Although conceding the technical challenges would be significant, Jones said CryEngine is in the same position.

"There are very different challenges when you’re building a racing game to a shooter, or an action-adventure or an MMO. I certainly think CryEngine could be used for any of those genres and be extremely high quality with any of them.

"We license the code base with CryEngine, enabling people to make those decisions for themselves, use the bits of CryEngine that will give them the best-looking racing game experience we can, but maybe take away some of the other things that aren’t so relevant in order to hit those extraordinarily high ambitions."

Crysis 2 is Crytek's own debut offering on CryEngine 3, and is available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Thanks, That VideoGame Blog.