GOONL!NE

Anybody desperate for a sequal to Crackdown?

Guess what, you maybe in luck.

Recently, on Xbox’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hylb’s podcast, Nelson himself asked on the behalf of Xbox 360 owners everywhere for a sequal to the game itself to Phil Spencer, the new head of Microsoft Games Studios. Spencer went on to say that Crackdown was one of his favourite Xbox 360 games without commenting further which was a major hint to the future.

Even more recently, members of the original developer of Crackdown, Real Time Worlds, formed together to create a new studio called Ruffian Games.

Now, to create a new studio, you need something or someone to fund your venture as we are in a recession, a example of this can only come as recent as yesterday when Free Radical went into administration but it seems this new studio, headed by lead designer of Crackdown, Billy Thompson, maybe getting funded alot by a certain party.

According to Videogaming 247, they have it on good authority that Ruffian is being funded by Microsoft Games Studios to start up but as well as that, they are also being funded to create Crackdown 2 for the Xbox 360.

The studio, while giving out no exact numbers, has now got a healthy number of staff who resigned from Real Time Worlds within the past two weeks to join the new studio.

Real Time Worlds, who gave a no comment on the situation to VG 247 saying it would be a breach of the data protection act, are currently developing MMO APB for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows and will be releasing it at some point in 2009.

If we hear anymore on the subject, we will let you know.

Source: Microsoft is funding Crackdown 2 development and Ruffian start-up [Videogaming 247]