"Timing just wasn't right" for APB at E3, beta details possibly "later this year"

Realtime Worlds president Tony Harman has just put out a statement saying the time wasn't right to show crime MMO at E3 this year thanks to some heavy business shenanigans surrounding the game in early 2008.

“This year we would have had an exciting presence with APB at E3 if we had continued with Webzen as our publisher," he said.

"But, given that we re-acquired the rights to APB just this spring and closed a very large fundraising round ($50,000,000) to secure APB’s future, the timing just wasn’t right to attend E3. RTW is very excited with APB’s progress and we have used our fundraising as a means to invest even more heavily in the APB development team."

Harman also said that the firm hopes to release more detail on the game's beta before 2009.

"RTW hopes to release more information later this year with regards to gameplay details and beta plans,” he said.

The statement comes as part of a fuller update from Realtime World community chap, Chris ‘Ulric’ Dye. Read it after the break.

It’s been a busy few weeks here at Realtime Worlds, so we felt it was time for an update to pull all the various news snippets together, along with some initial news regarding the highly anticipated beta phase of APB.

We start with the news that at the 2008 Develop awards Realtime Worlds won the Industry excellence award for business development, this was a big achievement for the company and we feel it supports the work we have, and continue to put into all aspects of the development of our projects like APB.

Over the past few weeks our Studio manager Colin Macdonald has been chatting with videogaming247 regarding various aspects of APB, from its origins tracing back all the way to DMA Design, to the news that the launch of APB is “closer than many thought”, these articles can be read at the below links and hold some interesting insights into Realtime Worlds and the progress of APB.

https://www.vg247.com/2008/08/05/apb-is-bastard-child-of-everything-weve-been-striving-towards-for-15-20-years-realtime-worlds/ https://www.vg247.com/2008/07/29/apb-launch-were-not-that-far-away/

Secondly, we have received and seen various questions regarding there being no Realtime Worlds presence at E3. Tony Harman, President of Realtime Worlds made this announcement to answer any questions and quash any possible rumours regarding this;

“This year we would have had an exciting presence with APB at E3 if we had continued with Webzen as our publisher. But, given that we re-acquired the rights to APB just this spring and closed a very large fundraising round ($50,000,000) to secure APB’s future, the timing just wasn’t right to attend E3. RTW is very excited with APB’s progress and we have used our fundraising as a means to invest even more heavily in the APB development team. RTW hopes to release more information later this year with regards to game play details and beta plans.”

As for APB itself, well things have moved on quite a lot over the past weeks, and testing has advanced to a very exciting stage internally, as such, we are preparing the initial steps towards beta, and are ready to open up our ‘Register your interest’ sign up page. This will enable you to get your email added in anticipation of the upcoming beta activities, and will ensure you keep up to date with all the news from Realtime Worlds regarding APB and future projects.

However, as the ‘Register your interest’ is part of our growing community activities, we would like you guys be involved, and so to tap into your enthusiasm for APB and network of friends we have decided that the ‘Register your interest’ page will go live only after we reach 500 members on our APB Facebook page, so head on over to http://www.facebook.com/pages/All-Points-Bulletin-APB/10139489470 and join the APB group, we are confident with the current interest behind APB this target will be quickly and easily achieved by you folks, so go out, tell your friends and spread the word about APB.

Chris ‘Ulric’ Dye
Community Relations Manager
www.realtimeworlds.com
www.apb.com