CCP Confirms DUST 514 Is PS3 Only

CCP's much vaunted console accompaniment to EVE, DUST 514, has now been officially confirmed as a PS3 exclusive. Apparently it's because the PS3 is much better designed for online worlds and micro-payments. I'm a touch confused about what DUST 514 is all about, especially how it interacts with PC players of a separate game. (Hence our discussing it.) Confusion I'm going to clear up when I speak to CCP tomorrow (later today in RCT, but it's still yesterday in America). So yes, this is sort of console news, but if you read on you'll quite how PC news it really is.

Described as a "persistent online shooter", players of the digitally distributed Sonybox release are encouraged to improve their goodies by spending real and earned money on in-game items, in an attempt to bring an MMO to a console. An MMO that's interacting with the activities of EVE, still remaining PC only. CCP describe the game as,

"a game of brutal ground combat and planetary conquest in which the actions of players on the PS3 will have a profound and mutual effect on the fates of hundreds of thousands of PC gamers in the vast interstellar reaches of EVE Online."

So what you've got here is planets from EVE now being accessible on their surfaces to players of DUST. EVE players can hire DUST mercenaries to help them conquer territories, which of course is the correct way around. I'd like to see more PC games hiring console serfs to perform the blue collar jobs we don't want to trouble ourselves with. I might be more interested in strategy games if someone on an Xbox is doing all the mining and building units, so I can get on with fighting stuff.

"The actions of ground troops and orbiting attack fleets are tightly interwoven, with the real time actions of players in one game directly affecting the other. A single bullet fired on the planet below can pivot the balance of power in EVE Online. Every action has consequences, and every reaction has the potential to topple empires."

We'll be finding a lot more about this on Tuesday.