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MAG Sony Press Conference Impressions

Sony showed the first in-game footage from MAG at its E3 2009 press conference, and we have all the details of what they unveiled.

74 Comments

To call MAG an ambitious game is something of an understatement; the game is set to support 256 players online in a single game. It was unveiled for the first time at last year's E3 in the form of a trailer, but this year Sony showed off the first in-game footage of it in action. The company recruited players from across America to join in with the demo, and previewed one of the maps from the finished game.

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The demo started with one team attempting to take over enemy land. The player whose perspective we were viewing was the commander of the platoon, and there were four platoons total in the "raven company" team. As commander, you can issue objectives, such as "attack bunker," and all of the players on that platoon who follow those orders successfully earn bonus points.

As the team attacked the bunker, we saw the opposition mounting gun turrets. The idea is to plant a charge on the bunker to destroy it, but you have to defend the charges or the enemy will defuse them. Once the point has been captured, air-raid sirens let everyone know that it belongs to the opposition, and helicopters land so the attacking team can use it as a respawn point. The final objective on this level was to launch an air strike, which pushed back the remaining enemies even further.

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Sony didn't announce a release date for MAG, but it did say that the game will be playable with the full 256 players on the show floor. The Sony E3 booth is huge, but not quite big enough to house 256 PS3s, so we assume that some people will be playing remotely. Needless to say, we'll be heading over to the Sony stand straightaway to find out more.

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craftlord271

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it's battle field 2 with 256 players...tactical squad based games like this has been tried in the past and has failed. Unless you get a bunch of your friends to play with you..no one is going to listen to the squad leader..other than painting target areas. Everyone is going to be like chickens running without their heads on.

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gmax

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gmax  Moderator

It is going to be very interesting to see how this game actually performs in practice in its released form and over real networks.

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Pete5506

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I hope this game turns out well, it would be cool to have a big battle with tins of people

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DarkNeoBahamut

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@gringojo: I agree with you about PS3 has better hardware than X360, but plz don't compare it to PC, CPU is less important in PC-gaming, GPU is like everything (and the best actual GPU has 240 Processor Cores) Source: << LINK REMOVED >>

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Anaris117

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@gringojo: You've obviously never played a computer before.

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twitchscb

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@craftieman05 You get dedicated servers with Sony but Zipper has built their network in a way that they get to control what and how much information is pushed out to each individual receiver. This also is giving them the ability to identify cheaters based on coding they have built from ground up for this game

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gringojo

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Sony PS3 Can handle anything more than Xbox3 & PC, PS3 is Octa core 8 cores Xbox3 is 6 core & PC Quad 4 cores

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Zero9698

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?

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craftieman05

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I think you already get dedicated servers when you play online with sony. Not that sure though.

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twitchscb

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They've been having full Betas for over a year now, you think zipper honestly hasn't gone, "hey the one true thing we have to overcome is lag"... It's been their sole focal point for the last year, and the fact that Sony has given them allowance to create their own dedicated network and servers means that they get to choose how much bandwidth information is being given to each individual player... All the people that are saying it's just going to lag up should do their research on what their talking about before they act like they know anything and everything

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VGA_assassin

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computers have not been limited to 30 vs 30. look at nearly any modern computer game with multiplayer. Battlefield series is a great example. Or any MMO for that matter. I don't think that sonys PS3 will be able to handle this game lag free though, and while it would be an excellent game (perhaps, as long as everything else is good) I think the need for dedicated servers may force a pay to play scenario. Otherwise I don't think this will run as smooth as everyone has come to be used to with console gaming online. If they can get it going without a hitch though, hopefully this will mean we will start seeing more games that raise the standard 6v6 or 12v12 or 16v16 standards that seem to befall all console games.

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suade907

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Years ago using P2's we played 256 player matches in a novalogic game and it was awesome. i can't remember the name of the game though. Oh yeah it was joint operations. The maps in that game were massive and the gameplay was a blast. You even had gravity affect your bullets.

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Griffin707

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I will be very surprised if this game actually runs smoothly. I mean this is developed by Zipper, and as a long time Socom fan i can say that they could barely manage 16v16. They need to remove the M for MAG and replace it with an L and call it a day.

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weaponr_vone

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i've often wonder that myself... how is it that the PS3 can handle so many processes and even as powerful as a desktop computer the limit has always been right around 30~ vs 30~ so usually totaling about 60~64 people only on screen at one time. i'm really wanting to see how well this turns out cause in the end it might just blow up before it kicks off...

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Decrate

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the graphics are bad but only because there are frikin 256 players. imagine fitting all those models into a single screen if they ever clash in a big brawl. now that is some serious computing power. most fps games never show more than 10 models at a time in the screen so no wonder they look great. mag looks to be a great game and set the standards of gaming even higher. now with the ps4 and xbox 720 they can make games with 256 players AND high definition graphics! woot!

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cockneyscouse

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Looked brown dull and already dated IMO

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Urizen5

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Two questions. Rhetorical of course. How well are the servers gonna be for this game? on slow person and the whole squad suffers. 2: for a game base on teamwork, wonder how many morons will purposely try to sabotage a game for others?

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Gamer4Iife

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Game looks chaotic, but it could be fun with teamwork and cooperation.

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XanderKage

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Two-hundred-and-how much now???

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deactivated-64efdf49333c4

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Dang, it's Sony. Oh, well. If they've figured out a way to get 256 people into one game, it probably won't be long before 360 developers figure out how to do the same.

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Naruto

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Looks like a lot of fun.

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BulletsnOctane

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It looks like it's a lot of fun. It's among the top of my list of games for this year.

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canana

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It was grand. I can't miss this one.

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Brainkiller05

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should be a really fun game, just hope they clean up the hud for the final release :(

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