Crackdown fans, all hope is not lost. You do have a reason to get out of bed, clear the room of Taco Bell wrappers, put on a smile and face the world. Crackdown 2? It could still happen, says Colin Macdonald of Realtime Worlds. Sure, the team is neck deep in APB development — which looks completely awesome — but, should the stars align, high jumping supercops may be in your future.

Calling the choice to not immediately begin work on a sequel "a horrible, horrible decision that we still dwell on", Macdonald tells VG247 that "I don't think the door's closed" on a sequel. Sounds like RTW is still willing, and able, to take another crack at Crackdown, should Microsoft call upon them. And they may, one day.

Crackdown 2: "The door's not closed," says Realtime Worlds [VG247]

Put these pieces together. Realtime Worlds made Crackdown. Realtime Worlds are now at work on an MMO called APB, which is not entirely dissimilar to Grand Theft Auto. Realtime Worlds were founded by David Jones, who created Lemmings. Oh, and Grand Theft Auto. Last month, Realtime Worlds bought back the rights to APB from Korean company Webzen, who were originally scheduled to publish the game. Why the buyback? Eurogamer are reporting that, according to "a credible industry source", it was so they could turn around and sell the game to Rockstar, who could then rebadge it as a GTA MMO. Realtime are keeping quiet on the rumours, saying only that they bought back the rights to their game to "give themselves some options".

Realtime downplays GTA Online talk [Eurogamer]

And by "the Koreans" we mean the fine folks at publishing outfit Webzen, which until now was the planned publisher of Realtime Worlds' cops and robbers MMO APB, planned for a PC (and possible PlayStation 3 and almost definite Xbox 360) release. You may recall that the Crackdown developer was on the receiving end of a $US50 million cash infusion, the majority of it we assume was spent on frozen haggis, but which some was surely earmarked to get the game out of hock from the Korean distributor.

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Realtime Worlds' Grand Theft Autoesque MMO APB (All Points Bulletin) has already been announced to be in development for both the Xbox 360 and PC. But with $US 50 million in their pocket, Realtime Worlds is considering all of their options. And that includes Sony's PlayStation 3. Studio Manager Colin MacDonald explained:

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Crackdown devs Realtime Worlds - founded by GTA series creator David Jones - have secured for themselves a spot of funding for their promising-looking MMO shooter APB (and potentially other projects). Like, $US 50 million in funding. Nice. It's rare that console games receive venture capital, even multiplayer ones, so it looks like somebody over at Realtime's doing a good job of selling the game.
Montgomery & Co. Raises $US 50 Million For Realtime Worlds [TechCrunch, via VentureBeat]

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During Dave Jones' GDC session, essentially a reveal of Realtime Worlds' online game APB, he touted the game's character customisation tools. After generating a handful of characters you certainly wouldn't want looking after your kids, he showed off APB's ability to recreate real-life characters. Namely, Jones showed digital versions of developers Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, Warren Spector and Richard Garriott that were made in the character editor.

While the above pic may not be of the best quality, we got a few individuals snaps that are much better looking. They're behind the jump, front page visitors, because I'm pretty sure that pic of a pants-less Miyamoto is not safe for work.

Seriously, man. Put some khakis on!

After Mike brought us our first real info and shots of Realtime World's upcoming MMO APB, we've now got the first footage of the game in action. Looks like a nice break from - and alternative for those not interested in - the orcs-n-loot status quo. Above is some cops-n-robbers action, while after the click's a walkthrough of the character customisation utility.

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Dave Jones of Realtime Worlds wowed GDC audiences this week with his presentation "My First MMO", debuting the successor to the award winning Crackdown known as APB. APB, Jones explained, is a massively multiplayer online game without the grind, one that draws inspiration from Counter-Strike more than it does from Ultima Online, EverQuest or World of Warcraft. Why Counter-Strike? "There's no persistence, no progression, no customisation, its just damn fun," Jones said.

APB does have persistence and progression, if done a bit non-traditionally. But customisation is one feature that APB has in spades.

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GDC executive director Jamil Moledina's updated his Director's Cut blog with a bit more news about the upcoming Game Developers Conference, cluing us into to the fact that Dave Jones, of Lemmings, GTA and Crackdown fame, will be spilling some beans about his latest project: An MMO.

Moledina says that all he can tell us is that the audience for Jones' session, "My First MMO", will be in for a real treat. He does go on to say that there is some details out there, some of which can be discovered by reading between the lines of the session description:

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Love Crackdown? I assume a good portion of the 1.5 million of you who bought it did—and not just for the Halo 3 beta key contained within. If you're a big Crackdown fan, you'll have to wait a long time for the sequel, as developer Real Time Worlds says they aren't working on it. Why? According to Develop Mag's report, producer Phil Wilson said that "Microsoft were a little late in stepping up to the plate to ask for Crackdown 2, and by then we had already started working on bigger, better things."

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