At PAX East 2010, I sat down with Realtime World’s Community Manager, Chris Collins, to discuss their highly-anticipated PC title, All Points Bulletin and the possibility of it coming to consoles. The game, which has been delayed for months at this point, has been called “the bastard child of everything we’ve been striving towards over the 15-20 years” by Realtime Worlds, is slated for a release in the coming months.
Hit the cut to read the interview, and find out what we think about the possibility of APB coming to the 360 or PS3.
Kombo: Since Kombo.com is a site that mainly focuses on console and handheld platforms, not many of our users may have heard about All Points Bulletin. Think you could clue them in on the title?
Chris Collins: Well, imagine throwing a hundred players into a living, breathing city, full of hundreds of vehicles and thousands of civilians. The city functions completely, with a hundred players constantly interacting, whether they are “Enforcers” or “Criminals”.
AB: So, good guy versus bad guy?
CC: Not exactly. The “criminals” are self-explanatory, while the “enforcers” are mercenaries hired by the government to take out the criminals and disrupt the criminals’ actions.
AB: Playing the game earlier, APB felt like a giant sandbox. What will attract players to the game time and time again?
CC: Well, here at Realtime Worlds, we’ve tried to integrate our three C’s: Creativity, Conflict, and Celebrity. Our editing tools allow players to create graffiti, cars, clothes, tattoos, just about anything. They then have the option to sell and trade their items they have created. The game is completely player-driven: there are no characters controlled by AI in this game.
AB: And conflict?
CC: Again, fairly self-explanatory. Conflict comes in the form of enforcers versus the criminals. Celebrity, though, isn’t as simple, but it plays a large role in APB. Players can become celebrities by being a supreme, deadly player. For those not as skilled, gamers can become just as famous through their creations with APB’s included editing tools – to the point where there are statues erected – literally – in that player’s honor.
AB: Well, everyone here at PAX East knows that APB is slated for a summer release, but think we’ll see it on either the PS3 or 360?
CC: We’ve definitely realized the potential audience for APB on both the 360 and PS3, but our initial launch will be exclusive to the PC. That’s not to say that in the future we won’t see any release on consoles like PlayStation or Xbox, though.
AB: In a theoretical release on either the 360 or PS3, think we’d see any cross-platform multiplayer seen in a few Xbox Live titles?
CC: It’s definitely possible. Again, we’re unsure if we’ll bring APB to home consoles, but cross-platform multiplayer only brings gamers closer together, and that’s what Realtime Worlds is striving to do with All Points Bulletin.
During my time at PAX East, I had multiple opportunities to try out All Points Bulletin. During this time, I received five (yes, five) of the fantastic t-shirts they were handing out, although I can confirm that, albeit awesome, my new pieces of clothing had no affect on my opinion. Numerous times throughout my experience with the game, I could only imagine how well the fairly simplistic controls would work on the Xbox 360 or even the PlayStation 3.
David Jones of Realtime Worlds agreed with the possibility, stating earlier this month that they would wait for the PC release until working with Microsoft for a console version. “So basically, about a year ago we said we’d finish the PC one first… If we’re going to go on console, we’d have to spend a lot of time educating Microsoft on the game, figure out how we would operate the game outside of our network.” Realtime Worlds, led by the creator of the original Grand Theft Auto, and the acclaimed Crackdown, believes that Microsoft will take interested in APB: “Let’s make a great game, finish it off as a big success, and because it’s a console style of game, then at least Microsoft can get a good look at it and say ‘this would be great to have on our platform’. They can look at it, and they can touch it…”
Will Microsoft “touch” All Points Bulletin? There is quite a MMO audience on consoles, but who’s to say it will head to the 360? Jones explained that “Microsoft also likes to have control of their servers, whereas Sony is a little more open about that stuff. There’s lots and lots of small issues [keeping MMOs off consoles], to be honest.”
Although the basic gameplay would work great with a Dualshock or 360 controller, some of the games’ aspects, such as the design editor, might not be so easy to control. To design clothes and cars, it took much precision, even when using a mouse and a keyboard. While some may find the editor easy to control with duel-analogs and a few buttons, but many will find it bothersome.
Customization is key in All Points Bulletin, but would the editor be as successful with an analog controller?
Would APB be better suited on the PlayStation 3 or Microsoft’s 360? If you’ve seen it, or better yet played it, do you think that it would work well on consoles? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
All Points Bulletin, dubbed as “ATB”, was originally announced as both a PC and Xbox 360 title, so who’s to say that the title won’t hop onto the 360 or PS3 Bandwagon? Continue to check here at Kombo for continued coverage of the title’s possible cross on Microsoft’s console.
