Keynoting this year's D.I.C.E. Summit, Sony executive Yair Landau revealed the concept for SOE's forthcoming MMO: spies. The project, codenamed "Vista" because its been delayed (har, har), is being developed by SOE's Seattle studio, where supposedly the game is already running on live servers. Landau previewed a conceptual clip that showed off a third-person shooter set in Prague with all of the appropriate set pieces in place -- or at least the necessities: femme fatales and exotic rides.

Landau clearly sees the new MMO as a descendant of the James Bond films -- fitting nicely with his shtick about adopting film genres into games -- choosing to preface the game's introduction with a Casino Royale trailer during his keynote. While spies have long been starring in their own games, there's an opportunity for SOE's project to further evolve the international espionage genre. Large-scale cooperative and PvP instances will obviously introduce some new dynamics, but toss in a proposed Second Life-styled virtual network, and suddenly Sony's giving players the ability generate their own content; making each player not only a 'James Bond,' but a 'Q,' capable of stuffing a laser cutter and remote detonator into an otherwise ordinary wristwatch. Of course, user-created content was not part of Landau's address, nor was a release date or platform.