The next entry in Crytek's first-person shooter series won't be called "Crysis 4."
Crytek is already planning for the game, which has yet to enter preproduction or find a business model or publisher — although Electronic Arts has carried them this far. Crysis 3 isn't due out until February 2013, but typically Crytek would have begun the first development phase by now.
“Normally, in this time right now, we would already have preproduction going on," Cevat Yerli, the head of Crytek, told Eurogamer. "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 said that naming the next game "Crysis 4" would be "misleading" at this point because Crysis 3 is the conclusion of the current story, just not the franchise.
“We want to finalise Prophet's story, and 'Crysis 4' would imply the story just moves on," he said.
Crytek has a free-to-play Crysis in mind, "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," he said.
“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 is releasing for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 early next year.
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