14 DAY TRIAL // Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli shed some light on the recent sale of the Homefront property and its UK studio to Koch Media, emphasizing that the move was needed so that the company could focus on its current projects like Warface, Arena of Fate, and Hunt.
Crytek has been a pretty successful independent developer for quite some time, but in recent months things haven't been going all that great for the German company, especially since it acquired quite a lot of studios and kicked off work on multiple projects at the same time.
In order to keep itself from going bankrupt, the studio revealed that it had sold the rights to the Homefront franchise to Koch Media, the owner of publisher Deep Silver, alongside the actual Crytek UK team.
Now, while talking to Eurogamer, Crytek boss Cevat Yerli confirmed that work on Homefront: The Revolution was going well but the whole process had reached a tough moment where it would've hurt Crytek overall to keep going.
"Homefront's timeline, as well as the focus as a studio we would have needed to put behind that, would have been detrimental to the transition to us," he said. "That was the comparison: are we delaying the transition further, or are we going to do it earlier than later?"
"We believe in Homefront. It's a great game and we still believe in it. But we made a deal with Koch we felt comfortable with as a strategic sale of the asset, which everybody comes out of in a win/win position."
According to Yerli, the costs required to keep Homefront's development going weren't a problem but the studio needed to focus on its current projects in order to make a profit and keep attracting fans.
"Given our strategy and the focus we need right now as a company this year, launching Warface, Arena of Fate and Hunt within the next 12 months, those three games need full attention for us. Homefront would have taken a lot of attention from top down of the company across Frankfurt, UK and many more. That kind of commitment would have come at the price of focus towards the other gamer services."
The Homefront situation was examined thoroughly before the decision to sell it was reached, according to Yerli, so fans of the troubled franchise will ultimately get to enjoy the game, instead of it being postponed indefinitely.
As of right now, it's unclear if Homefront: The Revolution will make its 2015 release goal on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
