Imminent PlanetSide 2 reveal hinted

By Fred Dutton Published 9 December, 2010

Is Sony's MMOFPS sequel finally ready?

Sony is preparing to take the wrapper off a PlanetSide sequel, comments from Sony Online Entertainment boss John Smedley suggest.

Smedley told The Escapist, "We have a very big launch coming in the month of March. It's a big first person shooter franchise that we're really happy with."

Might it be a sequel to widely-enjoyed 2003 MMOFPS PlanetSide, the interviewer asked? "Could be. We haven't technically announced it."

Smedley then told the interviewer that he could say that he had "hinted" that the new PlanetSide was imminent.

"This is the farthest I've gone [discussing it with the press] and the PR people are going to shoot me," he added.

We already know that a PlanetSide sequel is in the works. Last year Smedley revealed the follow-up features, "Massive battles on a scale no other FPS will touch. None of this 64 player stuff. REALLY MASSIVE. With much better organisation, and a tight focus on making sure the action is always going on, with awesome graphics."

Smedley also revealed in The Escapist interview why the game won't simply be called PlanetSide 2.

"We don't have the official name for it. PlanetSide Next is kind of the working title," he explained.

"We've learned some lessons with Everquest II - not one of the better moves that we've ever made. We should have called it EverQuest Something. Having Everquest I and II sit on the shelves at the same time, in hindsight, was probably not the the brightest of moves."

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (17) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • HisDudness #1 1 year ago

    Planet-sized Action Game

  • darkmorgado #2 1 year ago

    The problem with EQ2 wasn't the name, but the fact that it is complete and utter shite.

  • Kode #3 1 year ago

    The idea of Planetside has always interested me, I just never got around to trying it.

  • Mox #4 1 year ago

    I am defending our medical facilities!

    Planetside was ace. Not so hot once the population dropped, and there were maybe some mechanics that could have been tweaked, but it was a very solid basis. I'd recommend dumping LLU captures, and adding more structures around bases to give interesting territory for infantry combat. Specifically, to get places closer to a base where you can hide an AMS. There was little that was incremental about a base assault, it was about pushing in hard enough to get a hack in and a lockdown on the spawn room. If you got both of those close enough together, you win, otherwise you lose. Instead, I'd like to see a bit of back-and-fore with multiple fronts on the way the base assault itself progresses.

  • cnlfailure #5 1 year ago

    Sold.

  • darkmorgado #6 1 year ago

    FOR GODS SAKE SOMEONE BAN THE PHRASE FAMALEGOODS.COM!!!!!!

    /collapses

  • Galathorn #7 1 year ago

    Played for a few months, that game was imho, at the time, a very unique experience, seeing an big outfit in motion with all the tanks, air transports and the like... Quite Epic in 2000? 2002?

  • CaptainKid #8 1 year ago

    I would love a Planetside 2.
    I'm just very afraid the idiots at SOE fucked this one up.

  • metroid455 #9 1 year ago

    ps3 please then im sold woot

  • pantbash #10 1 year ago

    Planetside was a brilliant game, only slightly gimped by client side hit detection.


    Has tech progressed enough to remove that inferior process from the game?
    (Or at least some kind of trick to make it less glaringly obvious.)

  • SBfistfun #11 1 year ago

    I really wanted to like planetside, but I bought it and it ran like a sack 'o' shit on my pc at the time :(

  • Mox #12 1 year ago

    Client-side processing for hit detection is probably the best solution for MMO shooting. There are three possible approaches: server-side, protagonist-side and victim-side. Doing it exclusively on the server is best for security, but is the worst of all worlds for player experience; laggy shooting, and being shot by people you can't see both happen with that system. Victim-side means that the victim needs to do more precise simulation of the weapon state of the attacker, requiring more detailed and frequent updates of the attacker (either avatar state or individual bullet vectors). It's hard to work out who that is going to be, so that increases the client-side bandwidth prohibitively (everyone broadcasting every round they fire from their mini-chainguns to everyone else). Protagonist authority means the machine simulating the weapon, with the best information on avatar speed, acceleration and aiming, but he doesn't have perfect information on other avatar position and speed - hence the "being shot by someone I can't see" problem. Also, it's a tempting target for hacks because it bundles up all the offensive code into one place.

    Personally I'd work from an attacker-authority point of view but with "referees" - other nearby avatars can vote on the "plausibility" of offensive actions based on the information they have. Information like that can be collated just as on-line game results are arbitrated, and consistent cheaters can be identified by the number of arbitrations they lose.

  • geeza2020 #13 1 year ago

    I remember playing this briefly a few years back (when I had a PC capable of such things) and thought it was amazing! When it worked. Which I'm sure will be the same problem again, I just don't know how something on this scale could ever be done in a way that is accessable to all. Rather than just for those with monster internet connections and PC's straight outta NASA HQ. But fingers crossed they've nailed it. Something like this, could be a serious challenge to WoW. Kotick's been talking about making COD a persistant online experience, maybe SOE are going to beat Acti to it?
    Edited by geeza2020 at 10/12/10 @ 09:59

  • BiscuitBase #14 1 year ago

    If there really is a new planetside in march then.... JIZZ IN MY PANTS

  • OnyxLilninja #15 1 year ago

    Please please please let them get the engine / lag / hit physics right. Planetside was an awesome epic game, but it did suffer from very 'spongy' and 'erratic' gun physics.

    Massive thumbs up though :)

  • Trikk #16 1 year ago

    @Mox Why would you ever hack hit-detection when you can just set up an aimbot which works regardless of who calculates the outcome?

  • Mox #17 1 year ago

    Why not? They both achieve the same thing, in fact a hit detection hack would allow you to literally shoot through walls. Bit more obvious but putting hit detection solely on the client opens the door to a whole world of hacks. Aimbots are less intrusive so less likely to be detected, but they are not nearly as effective. Interestingly, they'd be less effective in a server-authorized firing environment, and in the case of an MMO-scale FPS you'd probably find that a good player was better than an aimbot - more likely to fire at the correct location instead of the apparent avatar position.