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Microsoft Game Studios are the publishers for the Crackdown series Microsoft are of course the makers of stuff like the Xbox.

Crackdown[]

By 2004, Microsoft brought the team the Xbox 360 hardware and suggested moving the game to that system, with a release date in the spring of 2006. By November 2004, the whole of Pacific City was in place, and cooperative mode was possible. However, in January 2005 they switched to the Renderware 4 Engine, which caused many problems and was considered a "gross mistake" by Wilson. Microsoft was able to provide additional programmers to help during 2006 to correct the problems, just in time to create a demo for the 2006 E3 Convention. Wilson admitted that when Crackdown was first unveiled, the team thought the game was too early to debut. "By the time we got to the end of pre-production we were woefully understaffed and over budget", Wilson commented.

Microsoft found that by October 2006, the game had fallen into the bottom 30 percent in test player reaction of all games currently in testing, and the bottom 50 percent in interest, though the numbers improved after a month. To help the struggling game, Microsoft decided to package the Halo 3 multiplayer trial with the game. "It was a great boost", said Wilson. Jones also was positive about the tie-in with the Halo 3 trial; "We kind of knew Crackdown would need as much help as it could get to get into players' hands … Like we've always said: It's a game player's game. It's not something that's going to sell in screenshot. So the Halo 3 beta was good".

Pacific City within the game consisted of 495 "city blocks" which the player could travel between, according to Microsoft Game Studio's Jami Johns. Each block had to be tested separately, so Microsoft Game Studios designed a software tool to track issues when the game was in testing. For example, the tool was able to identify blocks where the performance dropped or the game crashed, allowing the developers to redesign the area to remove the issues. A further tool was used for the "seams" between city blocks, and included a screenshot just prior to any problem, which significantly reduced the debugging time for the game; this tool was further used with Forza Motorsport 2. However, the team had found some bugs during testing that actually worked well as game mechanics without throwing off the game balance. For example, the ability to drive a vehicle up a vertical wall when the player has maxed out his driving skill was originally a bug within the game.

A Crackdown demo was released via Xbox Live Marketplace on January 23, 2007. It was originally dated for January 18, 2007, but was delayed due to Microsoft's certification process. This demo includes both single player and co-op play, but does not allow for jump-in co-op as seen in Gears of War. Silver account members received the demo one week later. The demo lasts for, at most, one hour, with a timer starting when either the player trains a skill to the second level, has eliminated two of the gang Generals, or has been playing for a half hour. At that point, a 30 minute timer will start, after which the demo automatically ends. During the demo, in-game skills can be trained up to the highest level, and this occurs at an accelerated rate in order to give players an example of higher-level abilities. The Crackdown demo quickly broke download records for Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace by becoming the most downloaded demo over a 24-hour period and a seven-day (week-long) period. In the week after its release, the Crackdown demo was the second most played Xbox Live game after Gears of War. The demo went on to become the most downloaded and most played overall by March 2007.

Crackdown 2[]

Wilson and lead designer Billy Thomson had previously confirmed that Crackdown was designed from the outset to be a long running series of games, stating that sequels for the game are very likely to be produced, especially if Crackdown performed well commercially.

However, during the Industry All Stars event in September 2007, Wilson confirmed that Realtime Worlds was not working on a sequel to the game, saying "Microsoft was a little late in stepping up to the plate to ask for Crackdown 2, and by then we had already started working on bigger, better things".

However, Shane Kim, a corporate vice-president for Microsoft, states that Microsoft still holds the intellectual property rights for Crackdown and that a Crackdown sequel is still a possibility. Realtime Studios manager Colin MacDonald clarified that if they have the resources after completion of APB, they could approach Microsoft to discuss a sequel. Industry reports that Ruffian Games, a Scottish studio formed from members from the Realtime Worlds team, may be involved in the development of a Crackdown sequel.

At Microsoft's E3 conference on June 1st 2009, Crackdown 2 was officially announced, with an accompanying trailer, which suggests that the game will still follow a crime-fighting theme, but with the creatures let out of a test facility in the later gameplay of the first game, playing a huge role, appearing at night, with a vast part of the storyline devoted to the agency trying to destroy all of these "freaks".

Crackdown 3[]

Crackdown 3 was announced at E3 in June 2014, simply titled Crackdown. It was envisioned to have the same futuristic look of the first game, but would follow an alternative timeline before the events of Crackdown 2. Originally exclusively for Xbox One. The world of Crackdown is back with an all-new experience for Xbox One. Developed by original creator Dave Jones, Crackdown 3 will deliver verticality, cooperative mayhem, and destruction.

It is described as "a new iteration of the ground breaking open-world action series that features a whole new campaign — fully playable in co-op — and uses Xbox Live to power a city that isn’t just an exciting place to play, but is a part of your destructive arsenal."

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