14 DAY TRIAL // This year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was filled with big announcements, but one that managed to drop by under the radar was Sony Online Entertainment's recent game, The Agency. While the spy-theme and the fact that it will give players access to a huge number of customization tools might not have drawn the attention of many gamers, the fact that it supports cross platform play between the PlayStation 3 and the PC is definitely something to be interested in.
The company did have versions of the game running at E3 on both platforms and players could interact with each other in the game. But when the game will eventually arrive in stores, such a feature might not be present, at least according to the senior game designer at SOE, Kevin O'Hara, who talked with VideoGamer, and revealed that, while technically such a feat was possible, the design choices were the ones that were creating the most problems for the team.
“We have not decided if you can play between the two,” O'Hara said. “They are cross-platform. We’re able to do it - it’s more of a design concern. We’re doing a lot of focus testing and we’re finding that people just, ‘oh they’ve got a controller, it’s not fair! Well they’ve got a mouse it’s not fair!’It’s what people say they want at first but when they actually play then. So it’s up in the air. We’ll go through beta with that and get strong opinions on which way to go. But technically we can do it if we want.”
Even though Sony revealed that it would release the game at the same time for both platforms in a few territories, O'Hara said that the launch date wouldn't be this year. “We haven’t done a release date yet for it. We’re still in development. We’ve got a lot of new features in the game - it’s really coming along. We’re having fun with it. We’ve got a couple more features to work on before we’re comfortable with it. I don’t believe it’ll be out in 2009. After that the marketing people control that information.”
So fans of spy-themed online games might still have to wait some time before they will be able to get their hands on The Agency. Until then, maybe you will get your fix with the plethora of other titles that will place an emphasis on spying, like Rockstar's The Agent or Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Conviction.