Crytek to support Wii U, Epic unconfirmed

Crysis 2 developer Crytek has confirmed that it will provide support for the Wii U and that a version of CryEngine is already running on the system.

Support for popular middleware Unreal Engine 3 has still yet to be confirmed by Epic Games.

"Crytek's support for Wii U is definitely going to happen," said CEO Cevat Yerli to Develop. "We aren't showing it but we are pretty much running it already."

Speaking as part of a forthcoming interview, Yerli claimed that the support was part of a generally more aggressive business approach for CryEngine 3, which will see the company expand to support Kinect, as well as smartphone and tablet devices.

"How far we have gone and what we mean is something I can't say more about now," he commented.

Wii U support for Unreal Engine 3 has already been implied by the announcement of games such as Batman: Arkham City and Aliens: Colonial Marines - which use the technology on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms.

Epic Games vice president Mark Rein has stopped short of confirming support though, saying only to Develop that it, "isn't an illogical conclusion to make".

Although the Wii U is generally agreed to be at least as powerful as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Nintendo has not released any detailed technical specifications for the system. As a result the degree to which its performance might exceed the existing HD formats remains unclear.

Comments from developers have varied considerably on the subject, but speaking to website IndustryGamers, Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia recently commented: "Some of the developers we spoke to indicated to us that the console will have 50 per cent more processing power compared to the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. This is yet to be confirmed by Nintendo."

The Japanese Garden Tech Demo at E3 did appear to surpass the abilities of current generation hardware, but Nintendo has not yet released any media of the real-time demonstration.