Realtime Worlds man David Jones has expressed his utter delight that APB is as it should be with the business side ”going really well” for the team.
It’s ”hats off” to Nintendo for nailing motion-control with Wii, now Microsoft has got to appeal to core gamers with ”the right kind of killer software,” doesn’t believe core games are suited for it.
”We’re very, very happy with it,” Jones tells GamesIndustry.biz on APB. ”We’re looking at a launch date of early 2010 - we’ve got the partnership with EA Partners cemented, because we knew we’d need to start building presence at retail, marketing-wise. And we’ve signed a deal with a company on the hosting side - so everything’s going really well.”
”We’re playing the game every day now, hosted internally - obviously it’s a company first, we’ve never done anything like this before, but overall I think everybody’s pretty confident that we’ll have a successful launch,” he continued.
CEO Jones then touches on Microsoft’s Project Natal, and his thoughts on the whole motion-control era we seem to be steaming toward. ”Well, it’s obviously aimed at a broader market. Obviously hats off to Nintendo for having done all that, but it’s interesting to see how Sony, and Microsoft especially, are trying to broaden their demographics.”
”It’s kind of exciting. My own personal opinion is that Natal is cool, although having nothing physical is going to be kind of strange for core gamers. It’s just going to absolutely need the right kind of killer software. There’s this talk that core games can adopt this stuff, but I don’t think so. Core games are really about having something physical in your hands,” he explained.
”I think that’s why I like Sony’s technology a little bit better in a way, having the wireless controller in your hand, with very high precision. I thought that was an interesting and good step for core gamers as well - but complete body-tracking?”
”For me it’ll have to be about that killer app that just could not have been done in any other way, apart from with that controller. That’s going to be a challenge, and I’ll be interested to see what that is.” As will we all mister Crackdown developer, as will we all.
David Jones will be speaking at the GameHorizon and Develop events giving keynote sessions, starting next week in Newcastle.
No Natal for you Crackdown
