Developer Crytek has officially announced that the third version of their CryEngine technology is available for developers to license for their own project development. The new version of the engine has the ability to run on the PC, offering DirectX 9 and 10 support as well as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

The biggest thing that Crytek says about the new engine is that it is next-generation-ready, claiming that the engine offers developers the ability to scale up to forthcoming gaming platforms. Scalability was a major goal for the company in the development of CryEngine 3; and the company claims that they have delivered on this with the ability of the engine to scale well across all supported platforms.

While Crytek says that their upcoming title, Crysis 2, is in development using the new engine, it is unclear what other titles might be using this engine technology. Our sources, however, continue to suggest that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, which is in development by GSC Game World, is using the new engine, as well.

Past versions of the CryEngine have powered such titles as Fry Cry, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Aion, and Merchants of Brooklyn, but the company has never really been able to gain as much traction in the developer engine space as they might have hoped. Currently, the Unreal engine technology from developer Epic seems to have the edge with most development studios as this time. Crytek is hopeful that things will change this time around with the release of CryEngine 3.