The Agency: "something" playable soon

By Oli Welsh Published 1 April, 2010

"MMO itself" will "take as long as it takes".

Sony Online Entertainment's espionage MMO, The Agency, is set to return to the public eye in some kind of playable form "within weeks", according to SOE president John Smedley in a GDC interview with GameTrailers (via VG247).

"You are going to see The Agency," Smedley said. "Here's an interesting comment I'll make: you're going to see something around The Agency very soon, like weeks. And I mean playing within weeks."

Reports have interpreted this to mean that the PS3 and PC game itself will be playable soon, possibly in beta form. However, Smedley's words imply that this will be some kind of spin-off, and The Agency "itself" is still a long way from completion.

"And the MMO itself, you're going to be seeing that... I don’t want to give an exact time frame when we're ready to release it," he said.

"We're really proud with the progress its made and we're happy with it internally, but we're not going to put it out there until we feel like we've got something that's better than everything else, so that's going to take as long as it takes."

"Something around", "the MMO itself"... Our bet is that Smedley is referring to a promotional web game, possibly on Facebook, given his words of admiration for Zynga's FarmVille elsewhere in the interview.

The Agency has been AWOL since it made a playable appearance at E3 and the SOE Fan Faire last June. In July, Eurogamer learned that senior staff had quit the Seattle studio developing the game amid rumours that it was undergoing a reboot, but those rumours were flatly denied by SOE.

Visit The Agency gamepage for more information on the spy-themed action MMO.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • GamesConnoisseur #1 2 years ago

    I still get a few seconds to gather my thoughts to separate the Agency from Sony and PS3's exclusive The Agent from Rockstar!

    Hoped they can separate the two exclusives a tad more than just a troublesome 'CY' but still looking forward to both.
    Edited by 1 at 01/04/10 @ 09:37

  • mcmonkeyplc #2 2 years ago

    Oh I thought this was about APB for a second and wondering why the xbox wasn't mentioned.

    Too many MMO's based on the same subject matter I think!

  • GamesConnoisseur #3 2 years ago

    That may be the case that The Agent would be available on X360 such as La Noir is now non exclusive, but it was mentioned that The Agent was designed from ground up to take advantage of PS3 BD capacity.

    Open world game over multiple disks wouldnt work, however all is speculations until the facts are known. We would probably hear more at E3 and see if remains an exclusive.

  • AOFanboi #4 2 years ago

    I thought the dearth of MMOs on the 360 (including the canned Marvel game) was due to Microsofts strict insistence on requiring gold Live subscriptions to play, thus making people "pay twice"? And that Squeenix had to quarrel a lot with Microsoft to get FF XI onto there?

    Meanwhile, Sony lets developers have a much freer rein when it comes to online services, and PSN is free to begin with.

    (I seem to recall that Microsoft's insistence that everything should cost money was also the reason Unreal Tournament III mods were usable on the PS3 port but not the 360 one.)

  • icematt12 #5 2 years ago

    Well, I see FirstPlay being involved somewhere. That shouldn't be many weeks down the line.

  • Murton #6 2 years ago

    Yet Cryptic said just last week that Sony don't understand MMOs and that's why they couldn't release Champions or STO on it.

    I'm fairly sure that The Agent is being made from the ground up specifically to take advantage of the PS3's unique hardware, not saying that it will never go to 360, just that it's very unlikely. And if Sony is chipping in on dev costs there'll likely be an iron clad contract preventing it from going multiplatform.

    AOFanboi: 360 doesn't get UT3 mods because MS had no way of vetting them before being installed. They have very strict rules regarding user generated content that Epic simply couldn't follow while giving the 360 full mod support such as that enjoyed on the PS3.

  • callum9999 #7 2 years ago

    The Agency is the only MMO I've really been interested so hopefully it will come out at some point soon!

  • AOFanboi #8 2 years ago

    I thought Champions Online showed that Cryptic don't understand MMOs? :)

    Sony - in the SOE form - has a shedload of MMOs (largely through buying them or their makers up), so they should be thought to have a lot of experience. Microsoft had Asheron's Call 1 back when their big thing was the gaming Zone portal, but even after Turbine took back control of that, Turbine seem to have a good relationship with Microsoft (LotRO, aka. AC3). Perhaps something can be done from that relationship?

    But the fact remains that in contrast to Cryptic's outburst there are more non-cancelled MMOs announced for the PS3 (DC Online, The Agency at least) than the 360 (where is the Age of Conan port for instance?).

  • Spekingur #9 2 years ago

    I was excited when I first heard of this game. But that was a couple of years ago - and since then, near to no news. Makes you wonder what is "wrong" with it.