Gamesindustry have interview Real Time Worlds' CEO Dave Jones about a number of things and one of the more intriguing questions they asked was how Jones reacted when it was announced that Crackdown 2 was being developed in the same city as Real Time Worlds are located Dundee by start ups Ruffians.
"Well, obviously we created the original, and you want to be associated with success, so we want to see it go on and do great things. It has such a strong following now, but it was one of those products that came out of nowhere, and I think that was indicative of some of the problems in the industry before - Microsoft didn't quite know what it was, didn't quite know how to market it. It was one of those sandbox games, and I think the success caught Microsoft by surprise a little bit.
We were always ready to start work on the sequel, and get cracking, but one of the big problems facing developers is that you have to know what you're working on about four or five months before your project ends - so at that point we tried to have a discussion, get things kicked off... but in the end we decided to plough ahead with APB.
The bottom line is that what we thought would happen is that a sequel would be done by a studio somewhere... maybe one of the internal studios, or others that they've worked with, and that would be the way it went forward.
I think it was unfortunate that it had to be with a start-up in Dundee... it is challenging to get enough developers in one region as it is, so that was the only little big of negativity to the story."
To read the whole interview including what Jones thinks about Project Natal, digital distribution and the state of APB follow the link.