Earlier today a game listing was spotted on Gamestop revealing an expansion pack for Rome: Total War, scheduled for October 17, 2005. PC Zone UK confirms this rumor as they are running a preview in their current issue. Here is a snip : "The expansion pack's called Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion and is set well after Rome: Total War spanning the years 364AD to 476AD. You can play as one of the Barbarian factions (including the Vandals, Saxons and Huns) and take revenge against the Roman Empire, or as the Western and Eastern Roman empires attempting to drive back the Barbarians. The big new feature is the addition of night-time battles, but lighter troops - including cavalry - can now also swim across rivers. There are also a load of new units to look forward to."

One of the PlanetBattlefield editors is currently attending a community event at the EA campus and during a presentation executive producers Scott Evans revealed that a Battlefield 2 demo is in the works and it is expected to be released Mid June featuring one map. No details whether this will be a single or multiplayer demo, but judging from EA's trackrecord, we can assume it will probably be MP. The official Battlefield 2 release date is set for June 23, 2005 in North America and Europeans will get lucky a few days earlier on the 17th.

Myelin Media today revealed details about the online gameplay in STACKED with Daniel Negreanu. The game will feature its own sanctioned multi-table tournament system called “STACKED Masters” and will also include involvement from the seven professional players associated with the game, providing the most in-depth online play and community experience for any console poker game.

Dragonshard will incorporate classic role-playing themes, a powerful and dynamic real-time strategy engine all woven together with a rich storyline involving a global conflict for an immensely powerful artifact with the power to change the fate of Eberron itself.

After Sony Europe renamed Wanda & the Colossus to Shadow of the Colossus over a month ago, SCEA is now following suit and had taken the name change on as well. The reason to to rename SCEI's upcoming action/adventure game is the same as before, "to better reflect the game's atmosphere and to avoid possible translation issues." Wanda is Japanese translates to "wonder" in English. Situated in the same universe as its prequel, the Collossus will follow a totally different story line.

THQ has released details of what people can expect for the upcoming first patch for Relic's 3D RTS Dawn Of War. While no specific release date has been announced yet, the new v1.3 patch is currently in Q&A testing, so it should not take too much longer. The new patch will address a slew of tweaks & unit balancing for all 4 races, game performance improvement, bug fixes, ability fixes and adds Observer mode, mod manager, friends list and plenty more (thanks RelicNews). Read more for detailed fix list....

A few weeks ago VIS Entertainment closed its Dundee office and laid off several people at its other remaining Edinburgh studio, virtually halting all production on its titles in development, State of Emergency 2 and Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer. Today DC Studios announced that it has acquired the rights to Rockstar's 2002 sequel and will resume development on State of Emergency 2, which is now schedule for late this year, PS2 confirmed, but no other platforms are specified at this point in time. DC Studios most recently finished Ubisoft's Rayman DS and is currently also developing a multiplatform title for Konami of Europe.

Chaos League: Sudden Death, developed by Paris-based Cyanide Studios, takes up where the original Chaos League left off, bringing with it a host of improvements and enhancements which make take the real-time, role-playing strategy sports title into a whole new bloody battleground. Here are the first ingame screens ...

While Phantagram announced it a few months ago, Microsoft announced today that it will distribute the next saga of the epic action-strategy game Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes exclusively for Xbox in late summer 2005. Read more for details & the very first screens ...

SpecForce is Techland's latest futuristic tactical shooter with a plot connected to already known Chrome. Using an optimized Chrome Engine, the gamer acts as an operative of future's special forces unit - SpecForce. Established to fight crisis situations that threaten the Federation's peace, equipped with the latest combat gear, the unit is the Federation's elite rapid reaction force.