Over at Stomped is an interview with id CEO Todd Hollenshead. Topics discussed include QuakeCon, the Sega Quake3 port, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Q3: Team Arena.

There is a short interview with John Carmack on Stomped, conducted at QuakeCon. They talk about the convention, the Quake3-engine games coming out, the Sega conversion of Quake3 and more. Here's a little snip

Stomped: I know you can't talk about your current project, but how are things at id right now?

Carmack: Well we got lots of really interesting technology coming out. We have got the strongest programming team we have ever had in the company where we've got programmers that are working on areas that we have conventionally short-shrifted. Some of the things like sound and game logic are things where I would just always do something that's acceptable that would get the job done. There was never like a primary focus for it. Now we've got expert programmers dedicated to it. We've got a programmer dedicated to making great sound; a programmer dedicated to making great game technology; a programmer dedicated to great tools. Of course, we are going to have great graphics and great networking and all this type of stuff we have always been known for, but a lot of the areas that have been kind of our secondary strength are going to be brought to primary level and that's going to be really cool.

I have a bunch of day 2 pictures that will be going up in a few hours.

This is Maarten updating at QuakeCon (I'm not dead, as some might've thought/hoped), the big LAN event in Mesquite, TX. The event is absolutely huge this year, with the convention area being used which is a lot bigger than last year's space here in the Hampton Inn. Besides the big LAN and the tournament there are exhibitors like NVidia, Sega, Apple and Activision - they are showing Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Soldier of Fortune Gold, the Quake3 Mission Pack and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I snapped a bunch of pictures today for you all to take a look at, I'll caption them tomorrow.

Bummer for Dreamcast owners looking forward to the Quake3 port, it looks like its going to be delayed a little while until the 1st week of October, nothing horrible but missing the opening of Sega.net

It seems everyone's favorite memory company Rambus is possibly being served with an antitrust complaint by major DRAM manufacturers according to Techweb (thanks Rosewood). This is being done because the DRAM manufacturers want the SDRAM interface patents to be declared illegal, and to block attempts that they'd have to pay Rambus for it. Recently Hitachi and Toshiba settled with Rambus, paying Rambus royalties for the SDRAM interface.

"However, far more is at stake," Merritt said. "When Rambus filed patent-infringement charges against Sega, an OEM chip customer, it opened Pandora's box. Suddenly every OEM customer of SDRAMs, DDR, chipsets, or microprocessors interfacing to synchronous memory is vulnerable to being sued by Rambus. Neither memory producers nor their customers can tolerate this unsettled situation, and it has to be resolved."

According to the folks at GameWeek the VP of marketing for Sega mentioned that UnrealTournament will be coming to the Dreamcast. Stomped.com has gotten confirmation from Mark Rein.

The constant game companies snagging LithTech as their engine technology of choice parade continues. This time around the company is Full-On Amusement. The team is comprised of guys from Blizzard, (as noted on GameSpot) Virgin Interactive, Sega, Sony Computer Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Maxis. You can also check out the announcement Jason Hall himself posted in these here Shack comments under the link to his interview.

Some console news, probably interesting for a couple of people. MSNBC has a story reporting that Sega will be giving away Dreamcasts, through a $200 rebate which you will get if you sign up to their Internet service for 2 years. You will also get a free keyboard with the deal. The internet service is expected to be $21.95 a month. Thanks acidjesus.

Seems there was a lot of confusion lately about TF2 being shown or not at E3. Actually a PR person for Sierra claimed that Valve Software was busy with the Half-Life Dreamcast port and wouldnt be showing TF2 because of this. That is not the case, actually GearBox Software is working on that. Here's the quote from Gabe Newell courtesy of TFTribune.com:

No one at Valve is working on the Dreamcast version of Half-Life.  That's being handled by Gearbox and Captivation.  However the E3 booth is going to focus on the Dreamcast version of Half-Life in support of the marketing activities that Sega and Havas are going to be doing for the launch of that product.

The guys at Well Rounded Entertainment have gotten their hands on a press release official announcing the porting of Quake3 to the Dreamcast console (it was rumored a week ago). It won't be developed by id, but it will be supervised by them. PC and DC users will be able to play against each other, using the Sega Dreamcast Network. The game should ship later this year.

The Sega Dreamcast version of QUAKE III Arena will have exclusive new arenas, a completely re-designed user interface and menu system, as well as an innovative two to four-player split screen option for non-stop action. Players are invited to test their mettle against history's fiercest warriors while prowling dark hallways and courtyards in gothic arenas and frightening futuristic spacescapes.

All kinds of rumors are surrounding the Microsoft X-Box system lately. Here is the big news though, Microsoft has made an official announcement on the X-Box console system. You can check out some coverage and details here.

The X-Box is rumored to ship with 64-megabytes of system and video RAM, will have an 8-gigabyte hard drive, and will be powered by a 650MHz version of AMD's popular Athlon CPU. Contrary to previous reports, however, the X-Box will not be using a GeForce 256 as its primary graphics processor. Instead, Microsoft has supposedly opted to use a future chip from Nvidia - most likely the NV11 or NV15.

Also, GameSpot got word that the deal between Sega and Microsoft has been broken off.

... the royalties for the Windows OS and the cost to make the X-Box compatible with Sega's Dreamcast were factors in Sega's decision.

Sierra Studios in cooperation with Valve and Sega have announced Half-Life to be ported to the Dreamcast console system being developed by Captivation Digital Laboratories in conjunction with GearBox Software who recently finished the Half-Life Oppposing Force expansion pack. Thanks loony at BluesNews for spotting this one.

Half-Life: Dreamcast will also feature an all-new single player mission that surrounds the Black Mesa Security Guard character, Barney. This special mission is being custom created for the Dreamcast by Gearbox Software, the Texas-based development team that created Half-Life: Opposing Force(tm), the official PC expansion for Half-Life and runner-up to 1999 Game of the Year by PC Gamer magazine (March 2000).

Also, Stomped has posted a Q&A with Randy Pitchford of GearBox about the announcement.

According to the Gamespot guys, who earlier reported that Halo was coming to the Playstation2, Quake3 is heading for the Dreamcast. They say an official announcement will come next week, but the title will be online-playable and will be published by Sega.

update Jack - Upgraded this to a real story from views, it's actually a big deal :) Also, interestingly, IGN had a similar report which they changed within the past few minuites to take out text saying that there will be net play with the DreamCast modem. Hmmmm... Single player only maybe?

Just a couple of collected news items for you:

- A new version of TecArena has surfaced on the Tectonic page, along with a new version of the BotPlugin for that program. TecArena is that frontend launching utility for Quake3
- The guys at IGN also have a story on the possible Q3 port to the Dreamcast, but with a confirmation by someone from Sega. The news story also mentions its rumored that id themselves will be doing this port, but that's just that, a rumor.
- Some more Q3 news, this time for the Europeans mostly, MoM is up and running. What the hell is MoM? A ladder system in Europe (well most of the countries there anyway), as well as tournaments and later this week, clan wars.
- And lastly some tech news in the form of an interview with Kevin Payne of Quantum3D talking about their plans with the VSA-100 chip that will be powering the Voodooo 4 & 5, and other technology developments.

Got a bit more word on the Q3A Dreamcast rumor that popped up again. Here are a couple of quotes from Todd Hollenshead saying that nothing new has developed with the situation and negotations with Sega for quite a while:

We've been in various levels of discussion with Sega and Activision for Quake III Arena on Dreamcast for a number of months. John openly said probably a year ago that he would like to see Q3A on Dreamcast and we've done some preliminary analysis on the capabilities of the console and believe it could be a great port of the game.

Thanks to ColonCowboy for sending in word of this Gamespot news item, which says "[Gamespot] learned from a source close to Activision that Quake III Arena is being built for Sega's Dreamcast console. The game is being planned for a late summer release and will use the Dreamcast Network for online play. Currently, spokespeople for Activision and Sega cannot confirm the reports.". They also report that it might be possible that Q3A Dreamcast players can play against PC users, although this is not sure. We'll have to see what it the truth in this one huh. Now where is the PC version of Q3A!

Yes, console news but I just know you guys are interested :) C0brA spotted on /. this story saying that Dreamcast will be Sega's last console as they believe the future is in "Networked, online "e-services"", regardless of the success of the Dreamcast. I wonder what they'll be doing for e-services. They say Dreamcast users have no reason to worry though, as they'll be supporting Dreamcast still for a long time, recently unveiling a zip drive, digital camera, and microphone.

Valiance also pointed me to this story on IGN, saying that the Sega chairman who quoted in the story was misunderstood, and that they will be using Internet more and more for software, online gameplay and e-commerce, but still with some sort of hardware on their part.

Gotten a number of emails from people excited about this bit of news. Half-Life is apparently being ported to work on the Sega Dreamcast system. The development of the port is "significantly" into production already although no official confirmation has been made. Damn, now I'm gonna have to buy a Dreamcast.

John Carmack talks about the DreamCast system and porting Quake3 to the system on SegaNet. It seems like it has been a bit of a turbulent ride and currently Carmack just doesnt know what the deal was. Apparently they were on the virge of striking a deal, here's a bit of it: Thanks Blue

So then more months pass and then they're all hot again to get Q3A as a modem pack-in on the DC, which I would love to do. A console game with a fixed function network interface moving Q3A with really good modem level networking and everything would be great. You'd get better performance modem-wise on the DC, mainly because you wouldn't have a bunch of other operating systems fighting for space and interfering with the network capabilities of the system. I still think it's a good idea, and they basically had a deal on the table which we were ready to sign and they mysteriously pulled out at the last minute, perhaps because they lost a quarter of a billion dollars last quarter and they just didn't have any money. I don't really know.