The Agency: "something" playable soon
"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.
