Sony Online delays PlanetSide Next

By Robert Purchese Published 4 April, 2011

Adds more resources to it.

Beleaguered MMO maker Sony Online Entertainment has stalled the release of PlanetSide Next following huge lay-offs announced last week.

The good news, however, is that PlanetSide Next will benefit from additional resources now that spy-themed MMO The Agency has been cancelled and the company streamlined.

"PlanetSide Next is getting More resources and will be out a little later in the year but we are pulling out all the stops to make it great," Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley told PlanetSide Universe.

Details of PlanetSide Next are scarce, but we do know Sony plans an evolution rather than a revolution of the well liked PlanetSide IP.

Sony Online Entertainment last week announced the closure of three studios, a move that cut 205 jobs and cancelled PS3 and PC action MMO The Agency.

Top of the company's agenda alongside PlanetSide Next will now be EverQuest Next - an accessible reinterpretation of the iconic MMO of yesteryear.

The implied but unwritten message of Sony Online Entertainment's restructuring is that DC Universe Online did not pull in the punters, despite Smedley optimistically announcing it was SOE's fastest selling game.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (17) Latest comment 1 year ago

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

  • slippysloppy #1 1 year ago

    DC is a great game but no one else is playing, the server I'm on is dead. I've subscribed for another 3 months but after that, sadly I'll be cancelling my sub. I can only put this down to poor marketing, supply and price model.

    Edit: I just want to say that it's always sad news when you hear of people losing their jobs and for a launch MMO the programmers and designers did a very fine job.
    Edited by slippysloppy at 04/04/11 @ 11:13

  • Augmentation #2 1 year ago

    I'm hoping that those "resources" are actually some of the fired team members from The Agency's development areas. It's never nice to see people lose jobs en masse.

  • George-Roper #3 1 year ago

    DC is a great game but no one else is playing, the server I'm on is dead. I've subscribed for another 3 months but after that, sadly I'll be cancelling my sub

    So do great games regularly die, mere weeks after launch? Why is no one else playing? Before you cut in with the sub cost, just remember that WoW commands, what, 13 million players all paying a monthly sub and DC:U isn't just a console MMO...

    DC:U tanked because it was yet another accessible, AKA poor and basic SOE MMO, missing even the most fundamental functionality required for an MMO to work. Their server model, not allowing PC and PS3 gamers play on the same servers is such a stupid omission that it really did set expectations for the full release being poor.

    EQ Next and Planetside Next will both go the same way, absolutely no doubt whatsoever. SOE are the amateurs of the MMO genre now, trying anything and everything to make a quick buck because they lack the balls to try and tackle a release to challenge the behemoths already out there. Gutless, spineless, cunts and they'll not think twice before ripping the soul out of what made EQ and Planetside great, in order to appeal to a wider audience.

    Never trust anything that tosser Smedley says. Even after all these years, it rankles me that SOE let Vanguard:SOH die a slow, miserable death. An MMO arguably better than EQ2 and with the potential to appeal to the EQ masses looking for something new, it was gutted of staff and left to rot, with their playerbase screaming out for any information about updates and patches (which they'd been waiting for for over a year), whilst at the same time that fucker Smedley was telling the gaming press that SOE are committed to monthly, ongoing updates for DC:U.

  • spliffhead #4 1 year ago

    Vanguard's hack job courtesy of Smedley was the Jump the Shark moment for SOE.

  • DirectAim #5 1 year ago

    DC could of been a good game but sadly even friends of mine who are mega fans of DC got bored and often came out with "too much of go kill these goons, then next quest is go kill these goons" boring and not enough people, also the text was difficult to read on screen, for MMOs that your meant to spend countless hours playing, if shit is hard to read your gunna head back to COD pretty quickly!

  • DirectAim #6 1 year ago

    DC could of been a good game but sadly even friends of mine who are mega fans of DC got bored and often came out with "too much of go kill these goons, then next quest is go kill these goons" boring and not enough people, also the text was difficult to read on screen, for MMOs that your meant to spend countless hours playing, if shit is hard to read your gunna head back to COD pretty quickly!

  • thegamesthething #7 1 year ago

    Planetside Next is going to be truly great, even better than the first one. And, whilst I'm dreaming, I'm going to use my upcoming £100m lottery win to buy the IP and make Planetside Next Next myself.

  • slickster #8 1 year ago

    I think MMO game's should stay on pc's because people probably bolt the PS3 so they can play for FREE online no one like's paying for sub's.

  • Crovax20 #9 1 year ago

    I really hope Planetside Next will be even more awesome then Planetside once was... Really was an awesome game, but they ruined it with their expansions.

  • tiny_Eggy #10 1 year ago

    Yay for new planetside! Sony really needs to get that game right, couldn't care less about The Agency.

  • TeaFiend #11 1 year ago

    I quite liked Planetside. Likely not enough to play whatever is remade from it, but you know?

  • dirtysteve #12 1 year ago

    I'm hoping for something special with Planetside, it always seemed like a good alternative to the clone-mmo's. Here's hoping it won't wander into rendeck-shooter-callitdoody territory.

  • slippysloppy #13 1 year ago

    So do great games regularly die, mere weeks after launch? Why is no one else playing? Before you cut in with the sub cost...

    My theory is it wasn't sub cost itself, though that didn't help, but more the cost of the title itself. If it retailed for £24.99 then i think a lot more people would have picked up the game. £39.99 was a huge ask for a game that required a £9.99pm sub on a console not used to the pricing model. The sub itself would have been better at £7.99 with £19.99 for 3 months cost.

    Marketing for the game was also very poor, the consumer needed to be educated on MMO pricing structure but this never happened. Sony were also very coy about there actually being a sub until quite close to release. The game was also extremely hard to get hold of on the high street, shops like Game and Gamestation only received a few copies each even the manager of my city's GS told me "it was a very half-hearted release, it seemed like they didn't really care." It was also pretty hard to get hold of online for the first few weeks and I myself waited until the price dropped below £30 on Shopto.

    As I mentioned in my first post the game is almost dead. When I picked my server, early one Saturday morning after purchasing, they were all low so my choice was a random punt. Since then on over 6 weeks of playing I've only ever seen it go to medium on a couple of occasions and the difference was not only noticeable but the game a lot more fun. It's never reached high level and for weeks I've never seen it go above Low.

    The other factor is once you reach the level cap the game becomes extremely hard. You have to really put the effort in to earn new armour to complete the level 30 missions and go on raids but this is never explained, the game becomes impossible and, with a lack of other players, very boring which is why I think the game has died so soon after launch. The promised new content never really arrived either, so there's little to justify the sub.

    I'm sure a few (or even many) may disagree with me but this is certainly my experience of the game and up until I reached the level cap, I would have awarded it 9/10.

  • George-Roper #14 1 year ago

    My theory is it wasn't sub cost itself, though that didn't help, but more the cost of the title itself. If it retailed for £24.99 then i think a lot more people would have picked up the game. £39.99 was a huge ask for a game that required a £9.99pm sub on a console not used to the pricing model. The sub itself would have been better at £7.99 with £19.99 for 3 months cost.

    Stop you there.

    If a game is good enough to pay a premium and then sub for, then it's good enough to pay a premium then a sub for. To put it another way, if DC:U had been released as a AAA title, with buckets of content at all levels and all the framework MMO functionality in place, then people would still be paying and playing right now.

    The initial cost of the game is neither here nor there because its inline with all other full PS3 releases and subject to exactly the same retailer cost reduction as every other game. That it has a sub, if your theory is to be believed, wouldn't have factored in until the ignorant console masses realized when their first 30 days were up. Those that went in eyes wide open to a sub have still been influenced by a poor game not to actually continue paying. Either way, the game isn't good enough to warrant ongoing cost.

    Also, just on the initial cost lets not forget that a huge percentage of WoW players (if not all) will have now paid four times outside the sub. Once for the release and three more times for each expansion, which is more than £39.99 for DC:U. And again, DC:U wasn't only a console release, so any blame placed on console owners 'not getting it' don't hold water.

    Not actually entirely sure what the point of your last post is. I know exactly why DC:U failed and its all in my first post. SOE are now a cheap, budget MMO company led by a talentless cunt called Smedley, who are more than happy to be the weak sheep of the genre, rather than the leader. Thats why both EQ Next and PS Next will fall just as hard.

  • Chufty #15 1 year ago

    I'm still hoping PS:N is going to end up at least half as good as the original PlanetSide. That would still make it the best multiplayer game since, well, PlanetSide.

  • dutzan #16 1 year ago

    I knew they couldn't possibly release a new Planetside game so soon and out of the blue.

  • curryking3 #17 1 year ago

    Frigging SOE.

    They really have to be the most undependable publisher around.

    I want my Planetside Next, and I want it now dammit.