U.K.-based Realtime Worlds is typically a quiet company, one that keeps its collective nose buried in its work.

But with All Points Bulletin reaching later stages of development, the studio, started by Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones, is opening up.

"...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," said Realtime community relations manager Chris Dye on Wednesday.

No official beta launch date was given.

He said Realtime is ready to open its "register your interest" page so gamers can receive updates on the APB beta and other Realtime news.

Dye said that the interest page will launch only after the APB Facebook page reaches 500 members--nearly 700 people have already signed up as of press time.

In a preemptive strike against possible rumors regarding the game's progress, Realtime president Tony Harman also explained why the studio didn't showcase APB at E3 in July.

“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.”