Develop: US firm acquires Realtime Worlds' Project MyWorld

@Justravis It's my opinion that that would suck.

@Shadowbender Realtime Worlds never had the 'rights' to Crackdown. It is a Microsoft IP.

See: http://www.next-gen.biz/features/crackdown-2 for proof.

@Shadowbender
The problem of the situation was that Microsoft didn't get back to them about a sequel to Crackdown 2 until they were into the development of APB. They wanted to, but since it was too late, Microsoft gave the development to Ruffian

@blueraja They were an independent studio. They can't sit around and wait for Microsoft to tell them to do something, they're not owned by Microsoft.

As has been stated further up, Crackdown is a Microsoft IP, not a RTW IP. ABP was what they thought was 'Building off the success of their one great game.'

And WoW players don't seem to have any problems with the business model. Just because they wrap content up as an 'Expansion pack' doesn't make it any different or better.

@Bearxor Umm you realize they shipped in Feb of 07, in July of 07 told MS that they were going to do something else first, then in Sept 07 stated at the All Star Dev conference that after APB if they had the resources they would talk to MS about a sequel, MS didn't want to wait 3 years and went with Ruffian.

In case you haven't noticed WoW is an exception in MMO's its the only one that has had anything near its level of success, a new MMO from a mostly unproven developer cannot just release it incomplete and expect to just have people flock to and ignore the problems while they finish it. The game just seemed like RTW forgot everything that made crackdown fun, the game mechanics were messed up, hell you couldn't even drive or shoot properly and there was no variety, less than 2 weeks into the initial 50 days I was done. I'm usually pretty patient and really don't spend a whole lot of time gaming compared to many I know, but there just wasn't enough to APB to make it seem worth the initial $50 much less anything that would make me want to pay up every month for it.