Crytek boss says mobile is the future of gaming

It's a long time since mobile gaming's only supporters were wild-eyed bedroom coders and the besuited evangelists of the major handset manufacturers.

But it's a sign of the times when even the boss of a triple-AAA PC and console games developer like Germany's Crytek says mobile games are more central to gaming's future than dedicated games hardware.

"The next generation of consoles will come under massive pressure from smartphones, tablets, and browser games," Crytek's CEO Cevat Yerli told Germany's Golem website, arguing that the rise of these new formats made the old battle between PCs and consoles irrelevant.

"I suspect the next generation of consoles will be the last one," he predicted.

Far cry from console gaming

Crytek made its name with PC titles so cutting-edge that gamers were best advised to buy a new computer to play them on, and Yerli concedes that market still exists.

"Of course there are still hardcore gamers who sit for an hour to install and then play for eight hours," he said. "But these consumers are becoming the minority. Today’s gamers buy a game for 99 cents, download it and play it for 15 to 20 minutes per day over a period of two months – and then they move on.”

In addressing this fast-changing market, he said, console quality was no longer so critical, which made dedicated hardware too expensive compared to smartphones and tablets.

For the same reason he wasn't very optimistic about Sony's PS Vita console.

"The Playstation Vita is currently too uncertain for us as a platform," he said. "Technically, I find Vita very appealing – to have fun with it, no question. From a business perspective it is a bit too late."

[Source: Golem]