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style="font-style: italic;">Planetside Next may be closer to release than expected.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) President John Smedley has offered up a trio of MMOG updates to Eurogamer. In a recent interview, Smedley talked about the shooter sequel that many SOE fans have been waiting for, codenamed Planetside Next. Smedley noted that while a release date hasn't been etched in stone for the game as of yet, and despite virtually no details released for the game, SOE is looking at a possible late first-quarter, early second-quarter release for it.

Smedley also confirmed that the team still hopes to launch the Playstation 3 espionage MMOG, The Agency later this year, but declined to commit to a solid release date. He did take this part of the interview to take a not so subtle jab at some upcoming MMOGs for being "generic copycats".

One thing that we've learned over our company's history is that it takes time to make great games. And we're not trying to make cookie-cutter MMOs. There's some stuff coming out in the next two or three months, MMO-wise, and a lot of it is generic copycats of other games. That's not what we want to do.

Given that the only major MMORPG confirmed for release within the next 2-3 months is Rift; this might have been a friendly poke from Smedley to his former EverQuest II Senior Producer Scott Hartsman, who is now Chief Creative Officer and Studio General Manager for Trion Worlds. Lastly, Smedley touched on the upcoming Playstation 3 launch of its free-to-play MMORPG, Free Realms, pointing without confirmation to a hopeful launch in early February. The full interview is available at Eurogamer.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.

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