Playback: The Week in News

Gaming news finally moved away (a little) from the ION Storm controversy (sorta) and got back to business of making games. We got more views of what to expect from Quake III Arena as it moves closer to release, and Relic came by to show Homeworld. On the tech side, S3 talked about its new processor, DirectX 6.1 released, and gamers can now preorder a Voodoo3.

The video card wars are looking to heat up once again as old comer, S3, makes another attempt at building its next Savage processor. Savage3D, the first in the series had nice graphics and DVD acceleration but fell behind with buggy drives. Hopefully, after learning how to mend its first card – Savage4 may be everything that S3 hopes and may even get credibility from PC gamers. 3D graphic accelerator darling, 3Dfx, now even larger after purchasing OEM heavyweight STB, is getting ready to launch the Voodoo3. Electronics Boutique is already taking preorders on the web for the upcoming Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 boards. Rumors out on the web say that that the Voodoo3 is underpowered and follows a much smaller evolutionary track then most gamers hoped for. Some industry folk have said privately that the Voodoo3 resembles a Voodoo Banshee more than anything else. And while the Banshee is a nice board, 3Dfx competitors have been tossing money into anything resembling a Voodoo-killer.

Sierra Studios and Relic Entertainment have been on the shy side of giving out recent information on its upcoming stellar real-time strategy title, Homeworld. But Alex Garden, Relic's president, stopped by GameSpot to show off the latest build. Our first impression of Homeworld was that it was the best in space graphics meets Battlestar Galactica (in a good way). You lead a ragtag fleet to find a new homeworld and on the way you're hit with some difficulties that you'll have to face. One thing for sure, if any title is set to change the tired world of RTS, this will be it.

After much waiting, Microsoft finally released its newest API, DirectMusic with DirectX 6.1 this week. No games are currently out that use the new API so we can praise or criticize it. Last year we saw a demo being run with at the Game Development Conference in the Microsoft booth. A demo person showed off DirectMusic in Shogo (which at the time was still basically a Microsoft project). The music didn't change the game all that much but with a technology barely in its youth, bigger and examples are sure to come.

Action gamers can't wait for more Quake III Arena shots. GameSpot UK scored the shots late in the week and didn't nab any new information on the title. Now we just need to see more footage and get some Quake III Arena demos out to the public (or GameSpot editors). In the meantime, here's a quick shot I took of the Quake III Arena poster caught at Macworld a few weeks ago. I don't remember a poster shot anywhere so enjoy. Oh yeah, sorry about the camera flash.