An email titled "Short Survey. Big New Game." has gone out to PlayStation Underground, reports The BitBag, and it tips its hand to pricing plans for MAG, the working title of the combat MMO Sony announced way back at E3.

The survey featured "at least 15 questions related to payment plans for the game," says Bitbag. "Seems Sony’s plan is to charge a yearly or monthly fee, while also one time fees for content downloads. It also mentioned hosting partners being EA, Sony, and Activision."

Conveniently, no screen grabs of the survey itself exist, although Bitbag did provide some of the email. If anyone in our community's taken this survey, or has additional info about it, let us hear it. Thanks.

Sony to Charge Monthly/Yearly Fee for MMO MAG? [The Bitbag, thanks Tevin]

The reveal of Zipper Interactive's MAG at E3 2008 was slightly tarnished by the fact that what Sony presented at its media briefing was a pre-rendered affair. Sure, it looked like that clip utilized in-game assets, but we've been burned by CG before. Never again!

Fortunately, on the official PlayStation.blog, we get a look at how MAG will run in real-time, thanks to Rade Stojsavljevic, the game's senior producer. Stojsavljevic notes in the comments that the official still of MAG is "an actual screenshot running on a PS3," one "cropped to center on the action."

Impressive? Hard to tell at 500 x 281 resolution, but we're willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

First look at MAG [PlayStation.Blog - thanks, Stephen!]

It’s not hard to imagine that Sony knew Microsoft would choose E3 to make its curtain-call announcement of Final Fantasy XIII for the 360. It’s likewise reasonable to believe they searched their catalog of works under development for the best candidate to generate any buzz. What we got was a mixed bag — the trailer of an incredibly expansive shooter, but it didn’t even have a title. It was just MAG: Massive Action Game. It sounded tempting, but very incomplete.

In fact it was shown to a focus group less than a month before E3. One among that group, after seeing the MAG E3 debut, reached out to me, under a promise of anonymity, to describe what was shown and asked of the group. Put simply, MAG — whatever title it comes out under — will be a mercenary combat MMO. We're told that it will more than likely carry SOCOM branding, as Zipper Interactive is behind it. And if so, it could be called SOCOM: Shadow War or SOCOM: Zero. Though Sony did stress it was a brand new IP at the press conference.