Last month, during Sony Gamers' Day, we ventured deep inside SOE Seattle's secret lair -- no joke, the building's not even marked with the company name -- to get an updated look at its spy MMO, The Agency, for PS3 and PC. Now that details of the event have finally been declassified, guild wars gold we're pleased to share our impressions of the eyes-on demo with you.

The actual event began with a fairly lengthy presentation by key figures from the SOE Seattle team, featuring Matt Wilson, Hal Milton and Corey Dangel. All three had previously worked for Microsoft (which would explain why the studio is located just two blocks from Microsoft's main HQ), and, between them, they have assembled an impressive resume, including work on Asheron's Call, Dungeon Siege, Wing Commander, Ultima Online, Total Annihilation and critical darling Psychonauts. Of course, as Wilson highlighted, SOE Seattle's primary objective is to deliver console-based MMOs, a vastly underdeveloped market, in which very few developers have experience. Enter The Agency.
Gallery: Sony Gamers Day: The Agency
The gameplay demo was controlled by Wilson, playing on PC, in tandem with another SOE Seattle developer, who was playing on a PS3 right next to him. Both were connected to the same server, and they teamed up to tackle a couple of missions for us. Immediately, it was clear that the PS3 version wasn't running on par with the PC version (which is probably why this was the first time the PS3 version had ever been shown). The PC version ran smoothly with sharp, crisp graphics and superior textures, while the PS3 version suffered from noticeably lower-quality textures and a slightly sluggish framerate. Overall, the PS3 version still looked quite solid, guild wars gold but when displayed next to the PC version, the disparities were very apparent.

The Agency is being developed using a modified Unreal 3 Engine, which provides an ideal foundation for the multiplatform aspect and a variety of pre-made toolsets to build out the graphical and online elements of the game. SOE Seattle is also tapping into the company's previous know-how (see Everquest, Planetside, etc.) to ensure an extremely low latency server farm, capable of creating an online action game with minimal latency. The PS3 version wasn't running on par with the PC version.
According to Wilson, the team has been working for two years to achieve this specific goal.