Crackdown for many echoed a certain fighting game of the past, Tobal No. 1. Sound odd to you? It doesn’t if you recall that Tobal was originally packaged with a highly anticipated Final Fantasy demo from Square that far overshadowed the game it came with. Turns out, the game was a classic. Crackdown echoed that.

While many snatched up copies of Crackdown solely to play the included Halo 3 demo, those who actually bothered to play the game found it to be one of the most enjoyable of the year. It even made our top ten list for the year. Yet, both the ending and the incredibly fun gameplay left one nagging question-where’s the sequel? Microsoft finally has an answer-sort of.

In a Wired interview Shane Kim, corporate vice president for Microsoft Game Studios, reveals that the Crackdown intellectual property remains with Microsoft, and not developer Realtime Worlds. More interesting, however, is that Microsoft seems to recognize fan demand for a sequel. Kim said,

We own the Crackdown intellectual property. We have a great partnership with Real TIme Worlds, and they’re pursuing a different path from a company perspective. So I wouldn’t say that it’s Microsoft not picking up the option there. I don’t really want to talk about that discussion, but it wasn’t the case where — we still love Crackdown. We consider that a pretty successful title for us, high-quality, I think that customers would like to see more in that space. So that’s an option for us. But I think for Real Time Worlds, they made a company decision.

So, it sounds likely, but then so did a Crimson Skies 2 at one point, and that never materialized. Microsoft seems to be sitting firmly on its hands with some intellectual properties that don’t make sense. Well crafted follow-ups to both franchises would seem to be good ideas, but perhaps they fear there just aren’t enough sales in them. Oh well, Halo 4 will surely need some beta testing, right?

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