APB: No Console Version On The Way Just Yet

24 May 2010 at 17:57:13 by Bill Vaughan

Realtime Worlds has admitted that there are no immediate plans for a console version of its upcoming MMO, All Points Bulletin.

While speaking to Develop, lead designer EJ Moreland said that, although the company wants to see the urban Enforcers vs. Criminals title on the Xbox 360 and PS3 as originally announced, a decent console port would require radical redesign to make it a decent game.

“Usually when you play a console-to-PC port, or vice-versa, it’s usual that the game won’t work as well as it did on its original platform. So for us, what we see for APB on consoles – and we’ve had discussions about this – is to make a different game that fits better for the system.”

However, like many other companies who set out to make a multi-platform MMO, Realtime Worlds soon decided to throw all resources at its PC version.

“Development started as PC-oriented and, at a point where we had enough resources to compile our own console team, we decided to dedicate our talent on the PC game to make it that much better,” he said.

There's been a spate of recent MMOs that were due to be made for the console as well as PC, but failed; Funcom's Age of Conan was originally meant to be available on the Xbox 360, as was Cryptic Studios' Champions Online and Star Trek Online – there's no word on AoC's console status, and Cryptic recently admitted to shelving the 360 versions of its games for the time being.

There's still no firm plans for the company to begin work on a console APB so, in other words, don't hold your breath.

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