MAG Sony Press Conference Impressions

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.

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.

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.