Gamasutra got the scoop on this back in December, but it's official today: Some of the members of the Crackdown development team have formally announced their new studio, Ruffian Games.
Based in Dundee, Scotland, the studio's key employees include a number of those who made the wonderful Xbox 360 open-world superhero game, including lead designer Billy Thomson. Ruffian says that it is working on a project with "one of the world's biggest and most successful publishers." This is where the official story ends and the speculation begins: Gamasutra cited "unconfirmed sources" that say Ruffian's project is indeed Crackdown 2.
The original game was an addictive sleeper hit, which helps to explain why a sequel was not immediately in the cards -- no one expected it to be so fantastic.
With original developer Realtime Worlds now working on* massively multiplayer open-world game APB*, the question of whether Microsoft would be creating* Crackdown 2 *was up in the air. Today's announcement gets us just a bit closer to finding out.
Image courtesy Microsoft
