sony-online-entertainment posts

The newest Magic: The Gathering Tactics trailer visits yet another one of the five elemental colors. This time, it is black: the color of death, despair, and hopelessness. Like one would expect, the creatures of black are either eldritch horrors or monstrosities brought forth by death-defying magic. Zombies, gigantic spiders, black knights, and massive winged demons are all creatures that swear their allegiance to a wielder of black mana. In other words, these are all the creatures you can summon in Tactics!

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The two latest trailers for the now-released DC Universe Online are interesting. While they appear at first to be complete opposites, that is, in fact, how they are connected. The first, above, is a brief rundown of the tutorial zone through the eyes of a new player. He (or she) must flee Brainiac's ship with the aid of The Oracle, and rendezvous with Superman along the way. The second, after the cut, covers the endgame dungeons and raids, including the wrapping up of the Brainiac plotline in the Batcave. If you're curious how your game will look at the start and at its conclusion, these two trailers will show you!

Download HD DC Universe Online 'Brainiac Tutorial' Trailer
Download HD DC Universe Online 'Endgame Alertzones and Raids' Trailer
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We've been hearing about Planetside Next for some time but little concrete info about the sci-fi FPS MMO remake has actually been released. Rock Paper Shogun now claims to have a couple of nuggets of info from unnamed sources about the Sony Online published game.

One is that the new game will continue to support thousands of players at once just like the original. The other is that the game's revamped graphics are designed to be run even on six year old PC set ups (the original Planetside was released back in 2003). Planetside Next should go into beta next month with a full launch in March.

Sony Online's CEO John Smedley is at it again. A couple of days ago he "tweeted" a render of what we assume is a new tank that will be used in the still unannounced sci-fi first person shooter MMO revival Planetside Next. Earlier today he did it again, showing off an image of a air vehicle render with the worlds, "I love me some Galaxy!" That likely means the render is the new version of the Galaxy heavy troop transport.

We are just hoping that all of this Twitter activity is leading to something and that the official reveal of Planetside Next is coming in the not too distant future. In the meantime we will see if Sony Online will have anything to say on the record about the game.

See that render of a slightly futuristic tank in the image above this news post? That image is likely the first public art from PlanetSide Next, the still-not-officially-announced revamp of developer Sony Online's sci-fi shooter MMO. The image was posted up by John Smedley, Sony Online's CEO and so far the only person in the company who has even talked about the game.

Smedley said recently that we would be getting news about PlanetSide Next early in 2011 "followed by a beta." Hopefully this tank render is just a warm up to a flood of info about the game very soon.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

If you are familiar at all with super hero comic books of the last few decades, you know the name Marv Wolfman. He has written a ton of comic books, mostly at Marvel and DC Comics, and created or co-created a number of well known characters such as Marvel's vampire hunter Blade (the star of three feature films and a short lived TV series) and the DC Comics team The New Teen Titans (later adapted into a long running Cartoon Network animated series). His biggest achievement is perhaps DC Comics' Crisis on Infinite Earths 12 issue mini-series in 1985 that redefined the comic book publisher's entire line up of titles and still affects the DC Universe even today.

Along with Geoff Johns, Wolfman worked on the recently launched MMO DC Universe Online as a writer. He's also the co-writer of the upcoming bi-weekly series DC Universe Online Legends which is based on the MMO's version of the DC Universe. Big Download was able to ask Wolfman some questions about his work on the game and other topics.

Magic: The Gathering is such an in-depth card game that many find it daunting to approach it. Five different colors, all the different color combinations, tons of different types of cards, and plenty of rare and useful cards to acquire. Naturally, those going into Magic: The Gathering Tactics will be a little confused if they haven't played the core game, which is where this trailer comes in. It details the creatures inherent to blue mana while showing that they share common themes: flying, magic, and/or water-based minions. There's not much else to it, although the graphics certainly look slick.

Download HD Magic: The Gathering Tactics 'Blue Mana' Trailer
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Sony Online CEO John Smedley has a tendency to make statement that we are sure his PR people wish he had not said. The latest such statement comes from Eurogamer where Smedley gave a tentative release date for the still unofficially announced Planetside Next game.

Smedley stated, "... we haven't announced a release date for it but you can expect it... We're looking at late first-quarter, early second-quarter." Even with Smedley's statements, the details of the revival of the sci-fi FPS MMO have been kept under wraps. Smedley also repeated that the long-in-development super spy-themed action MMO The Agency is due out in the end of 2011 and there's that Everquest Next project that was first announced last summer. And that's not the end of it. Smedley states, "There are [unannounced projects]. Can't even disclose a number, but a lot."

This week is a fairly slow one for new PC game releases. The only major new release planned is a downloadable game that's yet another adaptation of a collectible card game. In addition two games that were planned for release earlier this month, the action-RPG Venetica and the RTS-RPG expansion pack Spellforce 2: Faith In Destiny, are now scheduled to ship to stores this week.

Magic The Gathering Tactics - This downloadable free-to-play game from Sony Online is the latest adaptation of the fantasy-themed trading card RPG title from Wizards of the Coast. Instead of cards, players control 3D creatures in turn-based combat. Players can also purchase additional content for the game

DC Universe Online launched earlier this week and so far there haven't been any major hiccups reported for Sony Online's super hero MMO game. In fact the game's PvP features are so popular that Sony Online has already launched two more PvP servers to keep up with the demand. Our sister site Massively has more info on that move with a new interview with Sony Online's Chris Cao.

So now that the game is now out in the open, what's next? Eurogamer chatted with Sony Online head man John Smedley who said that players in DC Universe Online can expect regular updates to the game. He states, "... the plans are about a month out you can start expecting major pieces of content and major new features to come in. We'll be adding all kinds of cool stuff." He wouldn't cop out to exactly what new content and features will be added but did say, "The monthly subscription fee means players can expect a lot of new content from us. And I say a lot - I really mean that."