Hey all,
Today we have an important update for you regarding the release schedule and cadence for CRYENGINE in 2016.
Let’s cut right to the chase: For this year, we aim to have one feature packed major release roughly every 3 months, with minor releases focused on bug fixes and smaller improvements in-between as needed. You can expect this new release cycle to start with our next major release, tentatively scheduled for March 2016. What new features will it bring, you ask? Well, we have a long list of features under development, and look forward to sharing more about those with you in the future.
With the “what” out of the way, let’s talk about the “why”. When we first launched the Engine-as-a-Service Subscription in May 2014, we asked ourselves how to best provide values to users paying a monthly subscription. Unsurprisingly, especially to those who are accustomed to paying a monthly fee to play MMO games, we arrived at the conclusion that having a new release roughly once per month would strike a good balance between providing value for licensees while still giving our engineers time for internal development. While there have been some deviations from this plan over the past 19 months (a brief period of bi-weekly releases, or the several month wait for a feature packed 3.7), we have generally stuck to the “once a month” release cadence.
However, after reading a lot of feedback on the forums, talking to our licensees and discussing internally, we now feel that less frequent but more impactful releases is the way to go. This will allow us to include more meaningful new features and improvements because the team will have more time for development, as well as additional time to make sure the new features are as stable and polished as possible. And from the users’ perspective, especially those who are deep into full-scale production, integrating a new build every three months is much preferable to having to do it every four weeks. In the end, this decision was shaped by the feedback coming from you, our community of Cryengineers.
We look forward to sharing more about our future plans in the coming months.
The CRYENGINE team.