Reloaded Productions have been actively aiming to improve support and usability of APB: Reloaded. They have done a fantastic job since taking over the development reins from RealTime Worlds, aiming to better optimize the game, improve the playability and increase the amount of content in the game. The next step that the team aims to take is launching the title on the Xbox One and PS4.
According to GameNGuide GamersFirst CEO Bjorn Book-Larsson spoke about expanding the APB universe beyond the scope of the glorious PC platform.
The announcement about the game arriving on home consoles took place during a panel at the Digital Media Wire in New York City.
Larsson dropped the bomb that home console owners would be able to get in on the MMO, open-world, cops versus robbers-style action starting mid-2015.
The article makes a telling remark about one of the major problems that might hold up the release of the game, writing...
“Reloaded Productions wants current PC players to be able to carry over their customized characters and purchased content to next-gen platforms, but they've seen "incredible resistance from platform owners," according to Book-Larsson. They are still negotiating with both companies over this issue to convince them that it's a smart business decision.”
What's pretty ridiculous is that apparently both Sony and Microsoft don't want two things to go through with APB: Reloaded: First, they don't want cross-platform play, which kind of makes sense. I mean, I can't think of a game off the top of my head that allows multiple players from different platforms to play together. They each have their own network setup and don't seem fond of “crossing streams” so to speak. Warframe was another game that aimed for cross-platform play, as well as War Thunder. There's always one hurdle or another that keeps cross-platform play from happening.
The second problem raised by the console manufacturers is character transfers. Reloaded Productions wants to enable PC players to be able to carry-over their players to the PS4 and Xbox One. I think that's a brilliant idea... really. It would give players like myself plenty of incentive to not only play on the home consoles but to also put money into the game to grow characters I've already established, as opposed to paying out tons of cash to build up a new character from scratch. However, the latter is the very reason that Microsoft and Sony don't want character transfers. It might be possible to give them some feedback on that decision... over on their respective websites.
Even still, the whole thing of bringing APB: Reloaded over from PC to the home consoles has been something gamers have been waiting for since RTW originally announced the game many years.
While APB was originally supposed to be released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, the major problem is that due to all the customization-heavy features, the two seventh-gen consoles just didn't have enough memory. In result, the game was canned for the consoles... until now. Hopefully with the optimizations from the engine transfer, and cleaning up those nasty memory leaks, the game will find extended life on both the Xbox One and PS4.
You can learn more about the game by paying a visit to the official website.
