E3 2009: EA and Realtime Worlds partner on All Points Bulletin

by James Egan Jun 1st 2009 at 7:00PM

Filed under: Events, real-world, MMO industry, News items, All Points Bulletin, Crime

We knew that Realtime Worlds, the company behind the urban crime MMO All Points Bulletin would have something to announce and show at E3 2009, we just weren't sure of what to expect. That announcement came today at the Electronic Arts press conference. Imagine our surprise when Realtime Worlds creative director Dave Jones (who you may know as the creator of GTA and Crackdown) appeared on stage to announce that EA will be publishing All Points Bulletin. The announcement was followed up with a rather stunning trailer, depicting all manner of urban badasses. Tattoos. Fast cars. Lots of guns. Criminals and Enforcement fighting for the streets in a vast, open urban environment. The game will accommodate 10,000 players per world, divided into 100 player district maps. If you're a fan of games like GTA and Saint's Row, you will be blown away by All Points Bulletin.

All Points Bulletin has a newly revamped site, with screenshots and a game features page, and now hosts an APB video podcast from the developers. The game is slated for a PC release in early 2010.

Update: Want to see more? Flip through our E3 2009 APB gallery and check out the game trailer below the cut.

Gallery: E3 2009: APB

Tags: all-points-bulletin, apb, breaking, crime, criminals, e3-2009, ea, electronic-arts, enforcement, realtime-world, urban-crime

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Sean said on 8:36PM 6-01-2009

I'm assuming that is all in-engine footage. If so I will be very interested to see how large encounters hold up on a range of hardware. If you get a chance to talk to the developers, please ask for target minimum specs. Also how do they plan to enforce the 100 player district population cap? What does that even mean? Instances? Districts of different parts of a persistent city (ie EVE's systems)? Lastly, what's the "end game"? I saw the word sandbox thrown out as well as faction based combat. So large scale PvP based territorial control?

Marco said on 10:19PM 6-01-2009

The district is the real server, you will be put into it as part of automatic matchmaking ... at least that's how they said it was going to be in 2006.

http://mmorpg.qj.net/All-Points-Bulletin-Cops-and-Robbers-MMO/pg/49/aid/11686

More Planetside than WoW.

Cheesecake Bandit said on 11:50PM 6-01-2009

Its 3 years later though. I think its going to be more along the lines of AoC's instancing of zones. There's each overarching server and then a bunch of mini-servers put in place to prevent bogging down in popular areas. The mini-servers can be re-allocated as needed to keep things running smoothly. I hope this turns into something more than GTA online. I really hope though that it doesn't turn into a gutted GTA online though.