Crytek Says Ryse: Son of Rome PC a Real Port, Not a Mere Cash-In

The upcoming PC port of Xbox One launch title Ryse: Son of Rome is a genuine port and not just a way for Crytek to rake up some funds in light of its recent financial issues. That's according to senior producer Brian Chambers, who acknowledged in an interview with Kotaku UK that "revenue's always good," but development on the game actually began months ago.

"We've been working on this for months," he said. "It's nothing we've pulled together. I've personally been on this project as a senior producer for months."

Mechanically, the PC version of Ryse is on par with the Xbox One version. But to beef the game up with PC-exclusive features like 4K support required extra technical work. "It's important that it's not just a port," Chambers said. "We didn't go, 'Let's just shove it on PC and be done.' We dug into it and did a lot on the engineering side to actually get it to 4K. So it's the first 4K game to come out of Crytek."

"We didn't go, 'Let’s just shove it on PC and be done'" -- Brian Chambers

And the technical improvements don't end there. "We've dug in on the technical side as far as the anti-aliasing approaches we've taken," Chambers said, explaining that the PC version features also features super sampling.

"We've done other things such as native UI resolutions so you can scale it however and everything still looks crisp and clean," he added. "And then, as you would expect on PC, we've made it so that it's all configurable so the user can tweak the settings as they need to work best with the hardware that they have."

Though Chambers suggests that the PC version of Ryse is not a specific response to the cash issues and subsequent "transitional" phase at Crytek--which led to layoffs and the sale of the Homefront franchise--he said he understands how some people might think that.

"We were aware what was going on," Chambers said. "We knew we were going through a period where we were making choices to transition to self-publishing and games as a service. We were well aware that the transition was going to be felt a little bit. The communication was there and we were aware of the situation." The PC version of Ryse is in development at Crytek's studio in Frankfurt, Germany, which was unaffected by the corporate issues.

Ryse for PC, which launches this fall, will include every piece of add-on content released on Xbox One to date. This includes a long list of content like the Colosseum Pack, the Mars Chosen Pack, the Duel of Fates Pack, the Morituri Pack, the Ruins multiplayer map, Survival mode, and the Legionnaire's Trust sword that was initially released as part of the game's special edition.

Ryse: Son of Rome becomes the second high-profile Xbox One exclusive launch title to be heading to PC, following Dead Rising 3. That game comes to PC on September 5. Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said recently that the company is "not 100 percent happy with Xbox One sales."