Sony Online Entertainment has officially confirmed the reports that it's closing several studios, and also revealed that action-espionage MMORPG The Agency has been cancelled.

"As part of a strategic decision to reduce costs and streamline its global workforce, SOE announced today that it will eliminate 205 positions and close its Denver, Seattle and Tucson studios," the company said in a press statement yesterday. Read more »

[Update 12:30pm - XdM] An anonymous source at Sony Online Entertainment tells Shacknews that rumors of layoffs and the cancellation of The Agency are accurate. According to the source, a number of the layoffs also reduced the size of the EverQuest 2 team and although the Planetside Next team also took some layoffs, the project is alive and well. Read more »

While Sony Online Entertainment's The Agency was once slated to launch in 2010, the developer's relative silence on the espionage-y shooter MMO over the year has made it increasingly clear that it wouldn't meet that. Now, we have a better idea of when it's due.

Speaking to Kotaku, SOE president John Smedley revealed that The Agency is still in development and now scheduled to launch some time in the second half of 2011. Read more »

Sony's been awfully quiet on the subject of The Agency for some time now, aside from launching a Facebook game based upon the espionage MMORPG, but has broken its silence at E3 with a handful of new screenshots and a trailer showing PvP.

The last time Sony Online Entertaiment mentioned a release date for The Agency, way back in March 2009, the PC and PlayStation 3 title was said to be due out in 2010. E3 has brought no update to that. Read more »

While development on Sony Online Entertainment's PlayStation 3 MMORPG The Agency has been relatively quiet, the company has launched a Facebook game within the game's universe - The Agency: Covert Ops.

Revealed through Mashable, the game is a standard "mafia wars"-type affair that has players building up an avatar and equipping it with new weapons and improvements for some asynchronous combat, minigames, headquarters management and more. Read more »

MMO division Sony Online Entertainment today confirmed that it has laid off 41 employees, amounting to 5% of its full-time workforce.

In a statement, Sony explained the move as a means to "increase operational efficiency and reduce costs."

"SOE looks forward to continuing its leadership role in the online games industry as it celebrates the highly successful launch of Free Realms, the 10-year commemoration of its ground-breaking EverQuest franchise, and the continued performance of the company's other games," said the company.

Sony Online Entertainment's super-spy MMO The Agency (PC, PS3) and super-powered MMO DC Universe Online (PC, PS3) will both see a 2010 launch, reports Joystiq.

The word comes straight from Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley, who dropped that little factoid during a Game Developers Conference 09 presentation titled "an industry perspective on how new online games will reach the masses."

Developer Massive Entertainment has released the tenth patch for World in Conflict. The update is now available on FileShack for the US, UK and German versions.

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The console port of Massive Entertainment's RTS World in Conflict, originally announced for a fall 2008 release, has now been cancelled according to word from Massive owner Ubisoft.

"A console version of World in Conflict is not planned for release at this time," said an Ubisoft rep to IGN today.

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Ubisoft will publish Massive Entertainment's World in Conflict PC expansion pack Soviet Assault this March, the two companies announced today.

Existing owners will be able to purchase and download the expansion pack online, while retailers will stock a new World in Conflict: Complete Edition that includes the original strategy game, the expansion, and several unspecified "all-new features." Read more »

Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley has confirmed his company's commitment to console MMOs, stating that all future SOE MMO titles will see console releases.

"I would say that we would be one of the early adopters on [bringing MMOs to consoles], and we plan on becoming one of the dominant players in the MMO space on consoles," said Smedley to MTV. "We see that marketing coming; we think it's there now, so we want to get a good market share there." Read more »

A new World in Conflict patch has been released, updating Massive Entertainment's strategy game to version 1.008. The patch offers improved in-game voting, additional user and clan ignore functions and improved network code stability. Click through for a full list of changes

World in Conflict Update Read more »

Sony Online Entertainment has released a new trailer of its upcoming action-based instanced MMO The Agency (PC, PS3).

The company has not yet announced a release date for the game, which was announced last year. For more, check out our in-depth preview. Read more »

Many of the graphical effects exclusive to Microsoft's Direct X10 API can be achieved outside of DirectX 10 "if you give it enough time and resources," Massive development VP Petter Sydow told VideoGamer.

Within the PC edition of its RTS World in Conflict, Massive made use of some Vista-only DX10 features for additional graphical polish. Read more »

Publisher Sierra has supplied us with a large number of new screenshots for its upcoming releases, including Ghostbusters, Prototype, and World in Conflict: Soviet Assault.

Be sure to check out the full post for all the goodies, as there is simply too much to fit on our front page. For information on a game, just click on its name to pull up all our past coverage. Read more »