Rumors going back as far as this past December hinted that a new Crackdown game was in development at start-up Ruffian Games, home to a number of former Realtime Worlds staffers, developers of the first Crackdown. Not only is Ruffian taking over the series that Realtime established with a number of its former employees, but both developers are located in the city of Dundee, Scotland -- something that led Realtime Worlds CEO David Jones to be "a bit miffed at Microsoft" for the way that things have turned out.
"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 plow ahead with APB," Jones explained to GamesIndustry.biz. With Realtime out of the picture for immediate development of a Crackdown sequel, Jones had hoped that it wouldn't be a local start-up that got the call.

"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," he continued. "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."

Asked if he's able to get along with the new developer, Jones said, "Yeah, it's just one of those awkward moments. In terms of the franchise, as always -- as with anything we've created -- we're always keen to see it do great things. This is like a bump in the road... was there really no way it could have been done by one of the studios Microsoft shut down...?"

Late last year, when rumors about the existence of Realtime and a Crackdown sequel first surfaced, Jones had spoken harshly of the possibility, saying, "I also very much doubt that Microsoft would harm an otherwise fruitful existing development relationship by gambling on funding Crackdown 2 with a start-up on RTW's doorstep, for obvious reasons."

It's unclear if Jones simply changed his mind or if some harm has indeed come to the relationship between Microsoft and Realtime. When it comes time for development on Crackdown 3 to commence, it'll be interesting to see just who Microsoft turns to.