Massive action game / MAG

[Substance]

Sony has unveiled MAG, an enormous action game exclusive to PS3 that boasts 256-player online battles.

The name means Massive Action Game, in case you were in any doubt, and SOCOM outfit Zipper Interactive is the studio behind it.

Lead designer Andy Beaudoin took to the E3 conference stage to fill us in, and revealed that each side will be broken down into eight player squads led by those who had previously proven themselves.

There will be a character advancement trees to climb and you can fine-tune your soldier to fit your style. Eventually you will rank up and assume more responsibility in your throng.

The idea is to combine large-scale battles with the intimacy of squad combat.

All of this was illustrated in what appeared to be a CG trailer, which showed huge armies and multiple views of the action: commander view, top-down view - presumably depending on what role you take.

We'll hopefully have that for you soon.

MAG is due out sometime in 2009, or "beyond holiday season", as Sony boss Jack Tretton put it.

CGI trailer link (updated link, will probably be taken down again though)

What do you all think about it? i think it sounds amazing

 

[sarutobi]

Yeh i think it sounds great, ive been lookin foward to a proper war game for a long time

 

[Robert1986]

256 players spamming grenades? Fun.

CGI trailer look good though.

 

[Sinny]

Im a bit skeptical of this title, i never really like FPS type games with more than 24 people online. But depending on the size of the world and how many teams will be on each side i will wait for more details on it.

Its got my attention but not really pulling me in.

 

[d3moliti0n]

What sort of internet connection are you gonna need to have to run this smoothly online with 256 people? I dred to think of the lag in this game.

 

[Substance]

Hopefully they will have dedicated servers, but with the PSN being free this seems unlikely

 

[Red Porsche]

Warhawk has dedicated servers doesnt it?

 

[closeratio]

It does look good, I can just see them running it massive lag issues with it. Unless they manage to develop an engine or modify an existing engine so that it doesn't use as much network bandwidth per player. Like Robert1986 said though, I'd hate to see the results once everyone twigs that they can all throw grenades at each other

 

[Windle]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEvnHLzduuE

 

[Windle]

Warhawk has dedicated servers doesnt it?

Yep there would need to be hosted servers for a game of this scale, nobody would be able to host one themselves without a crazy upload. I'd imagine they'll be using PS3 clusters again.

 

[sarutobi]

i think its gonna be a lot more large scale than just lobbing grenades at each other, more along the lines of 10x larger than regular maps

like an actual battlefield in real life, they are huge

 

[msmalls74]

Hopefully they will have dedicated servers, but with the PSN being free this seems unlikely

All sony first party titles have dedicated servers ( well ones with online lol)

 

[sarutobi]

should have seen it coming tbh

 

[Gackt]

They'll probably cut it down to 32, or 64 players before it's released.

 

[Tefal]

wonder if the battle feild will be split up into small er maps with less people , but still one front like etc.

 

[mehuk]

that would make me buy a ps3 if the game was done well

 

[interspaced]

It's the SOCOM team and i'm very excited with this news. Maybe a spiritual successor to planetside.

Edit: Once again the optimism on OcUk regarding new ideas from the gaming industry amazes me.

 

[Kreeeee]

256 players is nothing if it's built like planetside.

I like the scale direction recent PS3 games are heading in (This along with Resistance 2).

 

[Soviet]

Sounds awesome. Hope it's possible to use a mouse and keyboard though. Aiming with a thumbstick is terrible, don't think I'd ever get used to it.

 

[queamin]

Nice