Far Cry console versions underway, but sequel rumours rubbished

C&VG has fresh reports that Crytek's beachy first-person shooter Far Cry, due out on the PC this March 26th, is currently in development for Xbox internally at Ubisoft, some six months after Crytek first spoke about the subject to Eurogamer at ECTS last August.

The conversion will be taken care of "where Ubisoft produces all its good Xbox games," according to Crytek. Presumably, and with the greatest possible respect to the rest of the publisher's global studios, that's a reference to Ubisoft Montreal.

"We didn't want to limit the PC version of Far Cry by developing it for Xbox at the same time," Crytek told C&VG, adding that there will be differences between the PC version and its Xbox offspring, and that Far Cry will also appear on a third platform, although it wouldn't say which one.

Given that Crytek's executive vice president Faruk Yerli mentioned a possible PS2 version of the game back at ECTS last year it's fair to predict that the game will appear on the Sony machine despite its obvious technical limitations, although it seems odd to learn that Crytek has, apparently, rubbished rumours that a sequel to Far Cry is in development.

Smoke and mirrors? Back then, from the horses mouth Yerli was happy to admit that a sequel to Far Cry would get underway as soon as its first game was in the can. "Yes, we will most likely be doing a sequel, and if so we'll be using an enhanced version of the CRY engine," he revealed - in August when asked during a Far Cry demonstration.

Interestingly, Yerli admitted Crytek's publishing deal with Ubisoft did not - at that stage - extend to a sequel: "It's just a one game deal with Ubi," he said in August 2003. Whether that has changed recently, or not is unclear, and until an official announcement is made it's open to speculation. It does seem highly unlikely, however, that Ubi would allow a rival publisher to steal the developer away from its stable. Perhaps the truth is that a deal is still being thrashed out over the future of the brand, and neither party wants to commit on talk of a sequel until this has been settled.

Ubisoft had no comment for us this morning on the C&VG story, but then it didn't comment when we broke the story back in September, either.