This is slightly old news, but I hadn’t seen it until this morning: VG247 has a rather dramatic quote from Colin Macdonald, the head of Realtime Worlds. They were responsible for the fantastic Crackdown on Xbox 360, and since then, have been pouring their sweat into a new MMO called All Points Bulletin (APB).

Last year, when we were all loudly clamouring for the sequel to Crackdown, Develop magazine put the question to Realtime: are we going to get #2, or what? They pretty much put a bullet in that idea:

“Microsoft were a little late in stepping up to the plate to ask for Crackdown 2,” Wilson said, “and by then we had already started working on bigger, better things.”

Kind of strange wording. Like they were fishing for some development cash, and left in a snit. I don’t know what the details are. Anyways, fast-forward to today, and they have changed their tune somewhat:

“It was a horrible, horrible decision that we still dwell on,” said studio boss Colin Macdonald of the choice not to move ahead straight onto a second game.

“But I don’t think the door’s closed. Obviously, right now we’re tied up with APB and everything else, but hopefully in the future we’ll have the resource and something can be worked out with Microsoft.”

Good gravy. There are a great many people in the world that would dearly love to see that happen, we said.

“Including 200 people in Dundee,” Macdonald added. “We would have loved to have seen it. We poured five years of our lives into that game. You know, we’ve got guys on the development team that have Crackdown tattoos, permanent tattoos on their arms. We’re extremely passionate about it.

“But at the end of the day we’re a company that has to do what’s best for the company. We’ve got to stay in business. And the numbers just didn’t add up. We’re not in the business of doing things because we’d like to, if we can’t guarantee that it makes sense for the company. That doesn’t work.”

Now, let me direct your attention to this thorough description of A.P.B. at Joystiq.

Does that not look like … Crackdown, to you? Like, almost exactly, but with fancier models? It even reads like Crackdown: a huge pseudo-modern city setting, lots of vehicles, crazy-looking comic-style characters, and two player factions named Enforcement and Gang…

I’ll put this as delicately as I can: for fuck’s sake, rename A.P.B. to “Massive Crackdown” and ship it, fools! This is a fire hydrant of cash waiting to be broken open!

It’s not like there’s a glut of MMOs in console land. Massive Crackdown would be a perfect stepping-stone into that space with an established hit IP.

There must be some major political/ego shenanigans involved, because even a mollusk like myself can see what obviously needs to happen. I can only think that MS owns the IP and are being obstinate about it. Who knows. (If you do, tell me, because I’m really curious.)