Playback: The Week In Review

The most interesting news of the week had to be Ubi Soft and Enlight's war over which company would publish Seven Kingdoms II. The articles over the past week explain it more thoroughly, but apparently Enlight Software, the developer of the real-time strategy title - had its publishing agreement transferred from Interactive Magic when the company sold its CD-ROM division to Ubi Soft. Because of the transfer, Enlight had been negotiating a publishing deal directly with Ubi Soft. Ubi says that those negotiations broke wide open after Enlight asked for more money. When Ubi said no, Enlight announced that it would self-publish Seven Kingdoms II. Ubi retorted by saying that if Enlight published with anyone else, it would face legal troubles. Enlight turned around the next day by saying that the game had gone gold, and the company would be taking orders for the game through its web site. This is bound to get interesting; we'll have Enlight's side of the story for you early next week.

In somewhat related news, iEntertainment Network (formally known as Interactive Magic) is still having troubles after getting a big load of money by selling its CD-ROM division to Ubi Soft. Now, the company's figurehead, CEO JW "Wild Bill" Stealey will be leaving the company when it finishes its Internet strategy. So far, that strategy appears to be buying die-hard simulation and wargame sites. It should be interesting to see what happens next.

ION Storm just can't be a fun place to work these days, as Daikatana seems to be pushed back every two days for every day of development. The company lost its fourth lead programmer late last week and announced the appointment of a new lead programmer. Now it seems that John Romero himself is getting back into production in the battle to get the game out to gamers. Supposedly, there's a rumor that there will be a Daikatana demo (a real demo) out in September. We're sure there are many gamers out there waiting for Daikatana but nowhere near as many as last year - luckily the company has titles like Deus Ex and Anachronox coming up, which may bring the company back into the black and out of the red with gamers.

On Monday, our news and hardware editor posted information about 3dfx's upcoming T-Buffer technology. While the company kept its lips tight, the technology will almost surely be a big part of the company's next chipset, the Voodoo4. The company seems to be taking the same approach to its technology as Creative Labs had with its Sound Blaster Live. Rather than develop specifically for the new chip, the T-Buffer technology will help improve anti-aliasing in most Windows 95/98 games. From what we saw, driving games and action shooters may lose many of the small inefficiencies that have troubled them for year - zooming in on objects and watching them suddenly pop out, for instance. Rumor is still hot on the street that 3dfx is working on building texture compression into its chipset to compete with S3's Texture Compression (S3TC). No word on what that compression will be like though, and considering we're getting close to the rabid holiday buying season, 3dfx will probably announce more details soon.