Source: Edinburgh daily news stalwart The Scotsman.

　　What we heard: As first revealed on the last day of March, Crackdown creators Realtime Worlds have secured a $50 million loan to fund its ambitious contemporary massively multiplayer online game APB. First announced in 2005, APB springs from the mind of Grand Theft Auto creator Dave Jones, and pits players on both sides of the law in a kill-or-be-killed urban warfare environment. As shown during a presentation during the 2008 Game Developers Conference, the game eschews many of the traditional precepts of the MMOG space, banking on gamers desire to earn street cred in lieu of monotonous leveling and questing.

　　While the news of the cash infusion was less than new, the Dundee, Scotland-based developer officially announced that it had secured the additional funding yesterday, triggering a fresh wave of mainstream media reports. One such outlet, Edinburgh daily The Scotsman, landed an interview with Realtime Worlds creative director and president Dave Jones, and from it sprung a font of thus far unannounced details on the title.

　　Some information from the report seems unquestionably legitimate. Whereas APB had previously been slated for 2008, the report quotes Jones as saying the game has now been bumped to next year. "We want to launch APB in 2009, which will be pretty much worldwide--including the Asian markets," said Jones. The article also notes that a beta for the game is expected to begin at the end of this year.

　　Other information, however, seems to stand on less firm ground. Paraphrasing Jones, the article says, "He said Realtime would also be likely to create a boxed version of the online game and would also look to adapt it for games consoles such as Xbox [360] and PlayStation [3] in the future."

　　This statement is both loaded and problematic. APB has thus far been announced for the PC and Xbox 360, two platforms which studios often develop for simultaneously using Microsoft common XNA toolset. Porting the game to the PS3 would be an additional expense for a platform where massively multiplayer games remain an untested commodity.

　　The official story: "The situation is that yes, all the consoles are an option for us, and we'll be looking at them, but there's nothing decided, nothing to report at the moment I'm afraid," studio manager Colin MacDonald told UK-based GI.biz. "Yes, we'll be looking seriously at it, but that doesn't mean it's going ahead, and it doesn't mean it's not going ahead." GameSpot had not received comment as of press time.

　　Bogus or not bogus?: Given this year's increasingly crowded release schedule, a 2009 APB launch with a late-2008 beta sounds plausible. As for a PS3 edition, MacDonald's statement indicates one is eventually possible--but far from officially confirmed.