QuakeCon 07: New tremors rock id's keynote

There's no shortage of news emerging from this weekend's trifecta of PC game fan festivals. Blizzard used its BlizzCon to unveil the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Sony Online Entertainment is set to announce a new game at its Fan Faire, and id Software is doling out tons of information at its QuakeCon festival.

The software developer has already announced a new distribution deal with Valve's Steam downloadable game service, confirmed a Wolfenstein movie is in the works, and unveiled Rage, the first game to use the new id Tech 5 engine. During the keynote address this afternoon, id CEO Todd Hollenshead also broke some news on a trio of Quake-specific projects.

First up, Hollenshead revised the release date of Quake Wars: Enemy Territories. Instead of "when it's done," the game is now set for October 2 in North America and September 28 in Europe. However, Hollenshead did not say if the date would apply to the console editions of the game, and he only showed the regular and collector's edition PC boxes in his presentation.

Hollenshead also announced Quake Arena Arcade for the Xbox Live Arcade. Little was said about the game, other than that it would be developed by Pi Studios. The Houston, Texas-based development outfit is currently also working on the PlayStation 2 edition of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

Finally, Hollenshead announced Quake Zero, a free-to-play version of Quake III that will be played in a Web browser. The title will be an experiment in advertising-supported gameplay, and will be the first project from a new development team now forming at id. After Quake Zero, this second development team will work on a new Quake game that will be built on the id Tech 5 engine. The new team is still being put together, so the idea is that it should be fleshed out and aligned to work on the same page before tackling a full game.