Speaking to VG247 at Develop, Realtime Worlds has offered a God-sent glimmer of hope that we may yet see a sequel to free-roaming future cop blockbuster Crackdown, one of the most-loved Xbox 360 games. That’s the spirit.

“It was a horrible, horrible decision that we still dwell on,” said studio boss Colin Macdonald of the choice not to move ahead straight onto a second game.

“But I don’t think the door’s closed. Obviously, right now we’re tied up with APB and everything else, but hopefully in the future we’ll have the resource and something can be worked out with Microsoft.”

Good gravy. There are a great many people in the world that would dearly love to see that happen, we said.

“Including 200 people in Dundee,” Macdonald added. “We would have loved to have seen it. We poured five years of our lives into that game. You know, we’ve got guys on the development team that have Crackdown tattoos, permanent tattoos on their arms. We’re extremely passionate about it.

“But at the end of the day we’re a company that has to do what’s best for the company. We’ve got to stay in business. And the numbers just didn’t add up. We’re not in the business of doing things because we’d like to, if we can’t guarantee that it makes sense for the company. That doesn’t work.”

Microsoft: please, please, sort this out. Please. We didn’t get level four hand grenades for nothing, you know.