Realtime Worlds CEO David Jones revealed a few weeks ago that he was "miffed" over Microsoft's decision to hand Crackdown 2 to Scottish upstart studio Ruffian Games. It's taken Ruffian a while to respond, but it finally has, with a defense from producer Jim Cope.

"[Ruffian] still maintain[s] a really strong working relationship with Realtime; they’re our neighbors in both personal and professional relationships, and we like that," he explains. "But leaping to our defense, in a sense, we firmly believe we’re the right people to make Crackdown 2."

Creative director Billy Thompson adds: "Close to half of our team worked on the original game. We’ve got core members from every discipline who worked on it, the majority of the design team, and, depending on whom you speak to, some of the best coders and most talented artists. But there are still guys at Realtime we want to be friends with, so we don’t want to get dragged into a slanging match."

I really don't care whether it's Ruffian or Realtime who works on Crackdown 2, so long as it's good, and if Ruffian addresses the "biggest issues" of the first game and maintains a "strong vision" for the sequel as it claims it does, then I should have no worries on that count. Hopefully we'll be chucking cars around and feeling good about it in no time.