Planetside Next planned for release early this year

Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley has revealed that the sequel to Planetside is set to be released before summer this year.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Smedley said ""We've announced publicly that the game is in development and we haven't announced a release date for it but you can expect it... We're looking at late first-quarter, early second-quarter [2011]."

This tallies with Smedley's announcementback in December, when he said "we have a very big launch coming in the month of March. It's a big first person shooter franchise that we're really happy with.” Smedley has also previously revealedthat a beta is planned before the release of the game, the first slots for which will be offered to current Planetside subscribers. Beyond that, little has been revealed about the sequel, except that it promises to have "Massive battles on a scale no other FPS will touch."