Ruffian Games producer James Cope has revealed the studio's focus for Crackdown 2, and for games after it, saying the studio wants to remain a one-project team, delivering "great core action games."

While demoing the game, and allowing attendees to play a multiplayer match for the first time at Dundee's NEoN event on Saturday, Cope also stressed how important online play was for Crackdown 2.
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A new title update fixes the HDD install issue for Crackdown.
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Scotland's promising APB developer wins Hottest Prospect award at Tech Media Invest. Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds has been named as the UK's hottest prospect in the digital sector.

The promising development studio – based in the Scottish city of Dundee – was awarded the Hottest Prospect prize during the Tech Media Invest awards, which took place on Sunday in London's Emirates stadium.

The studio was praised for the milestones it has already passed in the space of seven years.
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Dave Jones has quite a resume in the gaming industry, having worked on a variety of franchises from Lemmings to Grand Theft Auto and Crackdown. Speaking at the Brighton Develop conference, the designer said how he is a big fan of users creating their own experiences.
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Dave Jones has quite a resume in the gaming industry, having worked on a variety of franchises from Lemmings to Grand Theft Auto and Crackdown. Speaking at the Brighton Develop conference, the designer said how he is a big fan of users creating their own experiences.

He is, in particular, proud of what Realtime Worlds achieved with the original Crackdown. "We developed the city to function as a platform game, where anything you could see you could climb or jump to," he said. "It had other aspects, too, such as light RPG trappings, but we began to realize that our main innovation was our drop-in, drop-out multiplayer that managed to be successful in an open world."

Still, despite the game's almost unexpected level of success, the return on investment wasn't high. "With Crackdown we sold about 1.5 million copies, but even at that we pretty much only managed to break even," he said. "It was due to the amount of factors that were out of our control as the developer, influences such as GameStop's amazing used-game sales; we know 1.5 million new copies were sold, but it's likely there were 2.5, three million sold when you include used."
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TGB writes: "Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Game Studios, has revealed that the fan base for Crackdown, the Microsoft-owned IP, is much larger than sales would suggest.....

"We own the IP and we could have easily just found another developer out there and done something called Crackdown 2 but we wanted it to be special."
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Major Nelson writes:

"I just got word that a Crackdown NXE Theme is coming to Marketplace tomorrow. I'm a big Crackdown fan, so I was pretty excited when I was able to get a preview of what it will look like as well."
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In a bold move to make "greatest hits" console game packaging that doesn't make one want to stab oneself in the retina, Microsoft has apparently deployed new Platinum Hits box art to retail locations.
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Ruffian Games have put out a final call for developers to join their merry band on a journey to make awesome games. Having established their studio in 2009 Ruffian's recruitment drive is near an end and the places remaining are few.
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VG247: Microsoft should get on and announce this. There'll be nothing left before too long.

A UK publishing source has reliably informed VG247 that the unannounced Crackdown game in development at Ruffian is a multiplayer-only effort.

"Crackdown 1.5? That's generous," our man added. "It's more like 1.25."
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Ruffian Games today announced a significant boost to their creative capabilities with the appointment of industry veterans Steve Iannetta and Ed Campbell as Lead Designer and Senior Designer respectively.

Steve joined VIS Entertainment in 1996 and has since worked with Red Lemon Studios, Realtime Worlds and Midway Newcastle. He entered the industry as a graphic artist before moving into design and has held a number of senior roles including Senior Mission Design on Microsoft's Crackdown and Lead World Designer on Midway's Wheelman.
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One of Microsoft's biggest third-party exclusives was Crackdown, which led to very good relations with Realtime Worlds. However, if the latest rumor is true, Microsoft's good relations with the developer could turn very bad.

We're talking PS3-exclusive bad.
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VG247: It's not going away, and it sounds as though you're about to hear an awful lot more about it. Newly formed Scottish developer Ruffian is most certainly working on a new Crackdown game, says "rumour" today, and apparently it's scheduled for the end of 2009 or early 2010.
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VG247 has is on good authority that Microsoft is funding Scottish start-up Ruffian Games specifically to develop Crackdown 2.
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1. Is Home coming out next week?

2. Is Microsoft working on a Crackdown sequel?

3. Is Dragon Quest IX heading to the Wii?
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Microsoft's given a less than subtle hint that a sequel to Realtime World's beloved open-city 360 shooter, Crackdown, is a little more than fantasy.
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OXM UK spotted a post on the Crackdown forums saying that Realtime Worlds definitely won't be doing new DLC because they're busy with APB - but "hope to reward" their loyal fans later. Unlockables for APB, perhaps?
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Speaking to VG247 at Develop, Realtime Worlds has offered a God-sent glimmer of hope that we may yet see a sequel to free-roaming future cop blockbuster Crackdown, one of the most-loved Xbox 360 games. That's the spirit.
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Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds wants to launch its new game, APB, next year."We want to launch APB in 2009, which will be pretty much worldwide - including the Asian markets. This is our first big online game", Realtime CEO (and GTA creator) Dave Jones has told Scotsman.APB, in a nutshell, drops GTA-style gameplay into an MMO world. It's in development for PC and Xbox 360."If we have a big success with APB on the ... » Read More

Now this we don't like the sound of. According to the rumour column of US magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), a sequel to the awesome but short Crackdown will not be happening any time in the near future. Nor will it likely happen with the same developer, if it ever happens. EGM (via 1up) writes: "A Crackdown sequel looks like it won't happen any time soon. Sure, Microsoft has danced around the idea of making another addictive ... » Read More