This just popped up over on the Official Playstation Blog:

“I wanted to drop in and deliver some truly exciting news – on behalf of everyone here at Zipper Interactive, I’m pleased to announce that SOCOM 4 is indeed in development and is slated for release exclusively on PlayStation 3 this fall…

Oh, and before we let you go, we wanted to send a message to our SOCOM and MAG fans all over the world. First, if you play MAG and wonder what this means for the game’s future, wonder no more – we’re still fully committed to supporting MAG for a long, long time and the addition of another game in our lineup doesn’t change that. Second, it’s been great to hear from SOCOM fanatics located in every corner of the globe as we led into today’s announcement. We’re extremely excited to be attached to this beloved franchise again and knowing that so many people wanted us to return to something that already meant so much to us has been both inspiring and touching – so thank you to all of you who wanted it to happen! We look forward to living up to your expectations.”

As a longtime fan of Zipper Interactive’s work on the series (they created the franchise and were responsible for its first two sequels on the PS2), and someone who song an ungodly amount of online time into SOCOM 2, this is some mighty exciting news.

Word is they are very intent on delivering a top drawer single player campaign, and allusions have already been made to the storytelling in Uncharted as being a prime example of the approach being taken. This excites me immensely. I’m sure more details will be forthcoming. The first trailer airs exclusively on tonights episode of Gametrailers TV, but i’m sure it’ll be all over the web by tomorrow.