Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There are rumblings in the world of PlanetSide. The worldside of PlanetSide? While we know PlanetSide 2 is in production, all they’ve shown so far has been the odd model of a vehicle, which men like me are too handsome to care about. What I want is Hard Gaming Fact. Could that be nearby? It seems possible, with Sony adding a shiny countdown timer to the official PlanetSide 2 page. There’s also a new Facebook page (sigh), which makes it even more clear that Planetside 2 news will be appearing on the 7th of July, at 7pm. I think that’s this year, rather than 2077. Oh, and it seems it’s called PlanetSide 2 now, not PlanetSide Next. Which was a really stupid name.

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Earlier in the year we were being told to look forward to a Planetside Next reveal in “March”, but that month happened, and there was no new MMOFPS from Sony. They’ve had other things to worry about, I suppose. That might explain the recent tweet by John Smedley which said: “For all you Planetside Next fans stay tuned for a big announcement at our upcoming Fan Faire in Vegas!” Hmm! That’s just a couple of weeks away, on July 7-9. I – and all of you who forwarded me the link – suspect that this could be the big reveal we’ve been waiting for.

Nervously excited about this one. Fingers crossed for something brilliant, eh?

Bad, sad times hit Sony Online Entertainment last week, with the revelation that the MMO division is closing three studios, laying off a third of its staff and summarily executing planned spy game The Agency. This all sucks – hope everyone affected finds safe harbour very soon.

So what does this mean for the game we’ve waited our whole lives* for, the sequel to massively multiplayer manshoot Planetside?
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Oh, go on, you’ve earned it. Have another shot of PlanetSide: Next, this time the Reaver. It’s only the third image that’s been seen of the game so far, after the tank from a couple of weeks back, and the Galaxy which I’ve put below. You can see the fullsize version of the Reaver over on PlanetSide Universe, who exclusively got hold of it.

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A couple of different sources have now contacted us to confirm that the unrevealed Planetside sequel/remake Planetside Next will support “thousands” of players across the battlefield, in a manner similar to the original. Given the appearance of a couple of different images based on models from vehicles appearing in the old game, it looks like Planetside Next will be a straight-up remake of the original concept, albeit it with a different balance, as apparently the Galaxy (pictured) will play an even more important role in the game this time around.

Another source suggests that the game will be scaled to support “low-end” machines as old as six years. (So by implication pixel shader 3.0 cards and higher.) The game will apparently be launching in March, with a beta starting next month. We are going to be all over this.

It’s only a render of a tank, but: it’s a render of a New Conglomerate tank! And that means PlanetSide Next has the NC tank in it. And I glean from that we are looking at a straight update/remake/relaunch with a graphics overhaul? Hmm. Something like that. The image was twitted by SOE bossman John Smedley yesterday. Okay, that’s all I got. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

SOE’s John Smedley has been busy blogging about their games, and he says this:

“…early next year we will have announcements about Planetside Next followed by a beta. I can say this – it’s coming along awesome. I can also say that the first beta testers are going to be current Planetside subscribers. I’ve gotten a lot of email from current players offering to help test the game and we’re going to take them up on it.”

OKAY. EXCITED.

Over on The Escapist we get some hints from SOE’s John Smedley about the next PlanetSide game:

“We have a very big launch coming in the month of March,” Smedley said. “It’s a big first person shooter franchise that we’re really happy with.” I took a leap of logic and asked whether it was Planetside. “Could be,” Smedley said sheepishly. “We haven’t technically announced it.”

We have also received a number of anonymous hints about this being in development, something which seems to corroborate both what we speculated about last year, and what we heard about the mysterious “PlanetSide Next“. Imagine if we got PlanetSide 2 next March! Blimey.