New Crackdown Reportedly in the Works at Ruffian Games

Again set inside Pacific City, Crackdown 1.5 as it's being called would focus on multiplayer.

Hope for a Crackdown sequel reemerged in December when we heard that a group of former Realtime Worlds staffers had formed Ruffian Games and would be developing Crackdown 2. It was only recently officially announced that Ruffian had indeed been formed, though any mention of a new Crackdown was nowhere to be seen. Today that rumor is cropping up once again courtesy of videogaming247, the same source of last month's rumor.

According to the report, Crackdown 1.5 is in development at Ruffian and is set for a late 2009/early 2010 release. As the name implies, this wouldn't be a full-blown sequel in some ways; the game would once again take place in Pacific City and would have a major focus on multiplayer. VG247 also says we should be hearing more potentially as soon as tomorrow, though I'm not holding my breath for an official announcement to roll out this week.

Assuming this is all true, it's hard not to wonder what sort of effect this will have on the relationship between Microsoft and Realtime Worlds. Responding to the original rumor, Realtime CEO Dave Jones had some harsh words about the prospect of a rookie studio working on a new Crackdown and how disappointed he'd be if he were unable to be involved. Colin Macdonald, Realtime's studio manager, said at the time, "I also very much doubt that Microsoft would harm an otherwise fruitful existing development relationship by gambling on funding Crackdown 2 with a startup on RTW's doorstep, for obvious reasons." As excited as I am to potentially be playing a new Crackdown game within a year, I'm now very concerned we might never see a proper Crackdown sequel from the folks at Realtime.