Crytek reaffirms goal for free-to-play transition within five years

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has been talking about the developer's " inevitable future " in the free-to-play market as far back as last June , but he's still making sure we're extra aware of the coming change.

, but he's still making sure we're extra aware of the coming change. Speaking to VentureBeat, Yerli predicts it'll take Crytek around two to five years to fully transition to making "triple-A, free-to-play games for the world market."

"We decided five or six years ago that we want to marry the quality of triple-A games with the business model of free-to-play," Yerli says. "And at that time, we decided some other games, in some of our other studios, would head in this direction. We are observing, plainly—and we see this already with Warface—that the free-to-play market is on the rise. I think over the next two to three years, free-to-play is going to rival retail with quality games like Warface."

Though it sports a name prone to occasional light ribbing, Warface—sorry, WARFACE (followup battle yell optional)—is succeeding with the slick CryEngine 3 purring beneath its hood. At least, that's what 5 million Russianswould tell you.

Yerli says Crytek's eventual transformation will turn the company "from a developer to a service company," due in major part to its upcoming rollout of Gface, its social platform for connecting players through its games.

"If we could launch our games on a platform that already exists today, and we could get the same results, then we wouldn't build our own platform," Yerli explains. "But we're convinced that our platform does some particularly new things that makes our games behave better. That's why we plan to offer this service to third parties."