At the moment, the team is trying out a number of different concepts

Nov 13, 2012 10:28 GMT  ·  By

Cevat Yerli, the head of the Crytek video game development studio, reveals that a fourth game in the long-running Crysis series is already in the early stages of development and will have a core structure that might surprise some fans of the franchise.

The developer tells Eurogamer that, “We are excited about the DNA of Crysis and of the franchise. There can be literally tonnes of titles out there within the franchise. Unlike Far Cry, this time around we feel very flexible about Crysis.”

Yerli says that the game is planned, but it is not in the pre-production stage, which means that the team is only coming up with possible ideas for the game, but not yet prototyping them and testing whether they are suited for the Crysis universe.

The studio leader adds, “Normally in this time right now we would already have pre-production going on, 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.”

Crytek has been talking about free-to-play a lot over the last few months and about the way the new business model could benefit home consoles.

The company might be ready to make Crysis 4 a full-on online game, supported by gamers using microtransactions.

The new project from Crytek will also probably be linked to the next generation of home consoles rather than the current one.

Crysis 3 will be available during February 2013 on the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC.

The game will see Prophet return to New York, which has been encased in a bio dome, and will have access to a number of new toys to play around with, including a stealth bow.