Spencer: Ruffian is "the right team" for Crackdown 2

Microsoft Games Studios head Phil Spencer has defended the decision to give development of Crackdown 2 to upstart Ruffian Games instead of developer of the original, RealTime Worlds.

"It would have been easy to chase the money but, again, I wanted to make sure that anything we work on is correctly nurtured. We had to find the right team who really understood what game it is – and that was Billy and the team at Ruffian," said Spencer.

He also admitted that Microsoft thought long and hard on whom they should have given the contract to.

"We own the Crackdown IP and we could have just found another developer out there and done something called Crackdown 2 but as you and others know, it’s one of my favourite games of all time; so I personally wanted it to be special if we went ahead with a sequel.

If there was anyone that was a stickler about commissioning a new one, it was me. I didn’t want to just turn the crank."

More over at Develop.