Crackdown team wanted 200 achievements

Crackdown was originally set to feature 200 unlockable achievements, but Microsoft wouldn't allow it, according to an MTV report.

The website reports that the Real Time Worlds team planned for 200 and asked Microsoft to raise the cap.

"They were only allowing 50, and we were saying, 'Oh, that's going to cripple us,'" RTW's David Jones explained. "Eventually they announced they were going to a higher number." That number was 80, which Jones says is Microsoft's new maximum.

However, early reports suggest Crackdown will only offer 43 achievements, for a total of 900 gamerpoints - with the additional 100 that make up the boxed game's obligatory 1000 due to follow in free downloadable content.

Either way, the emphasis was on rewarding the player - with the developers even programming the clouds to do interesting things so that players who had scaled the half-mile-high agency building had something to enjoy.

Another reward players get for buying into Crackdown is a crack at the Halo 3 beta, and Jones also told MTV that he was pleased to offer that, despite suggestions it's hijacking interest in the game.

"We kind of knew 'Crackdown' would need as much help as it could get to get into players' hands," Jones said. "Like we've always said: It's a game player's game. It's not something that's going to sell in screenshot. So that was good."

We're not arguing, as you'll know if you saw how warmly received it was in our recent impressions of a full build of the game.