Playback: The Week In News

While the week was short due to all the July 4 festivities, the week in gaming had a few festivities of its own. Here's a quick look back at the news that caught our eye this week.

Microsoft continues to build up its impressive gaming lineup with all sorts of titles. Late on Thursday, Microsoft announced that it had signed an agreement with Zipper Interactive to help create a new world based on piracy and aircraft. Considering that FASA Interactive (now a part of Microsoft) created the world of Crimson Skies board game for FASA Corp - which combines piracy and aircraft - it seems pretty obvious that this will be the secret unannounced title. And with GenCon coming up, where Crimson Skies was one of the darlings of the show, MS might announce the title soon. In other Microsoft news, the company has also signed a deal with Konami to port Konami games to the PC as Konami ports Microsoft games to the consoles. If you've ever played Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation, you'd understand why the game will be amazingly popular on the PC.

While S3 has been tooting its horns about its compression technology for a while, gamers really haven't been able to actually play the technology firsthand. We've seen demos and have our Savage 4 boards ready and waiting to see how fast the technology performs at gameplay speeds for ourselves. With converts at id with Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, the technology will soon have its ultimate tests. The newest convert this week was Rage Software, the same folks behind Incoming. Considering the graphical wizardry already displayed by the first title, it will be great to see what it does with S3's Texture Compression.

Multitude - the developer of the voice-during-gameplay title, FireTeam - aren't dead. Rumors have crept around for a while that the company had lost a good deal of money and was seeking financial support. Apparently, it has found it this week, as US$10.5 million has filled its coffers. The company is hoping that its FireTalk technology will help to expand voice-over network communications ever outward. Considering Microsoft will be adding BattleCom voice communications to DirectX 8.0 for gaming, Microsoft may have already squashed voice communications efforts from others. We'll keep our eyes open to see if Multitude takes on the big M.

Also, the Force has been pushed down as Total Annihilation: Kingdoms took the top seed in PC Data's weekly top-selling software listing. Phantom Menace is holding at number two, as Racer spins out at number six.