Ubisoft today announced that Ubisoft's Montreal studio is currently developing Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3 (Working Title), the next installment in the now-legendary Splinter Cell franchise. The Splinter Cell titles have consistently received some of industry's highest-ever review scores and most prestigious awards, and have sold, cumulatively, more than 6 million copies worldwide. Splinter Cell 3 will be shown for the first time ever in a theater-style demo at Ubisoft's E3 booth - #1046 in the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center, and is scheduled for a PC launch in late 2004.

Midway Games Inc. today announced its roster of titles scheduled for exhibit at the annual E3. Headlining the selection is Mortal Kombat: Deception, the next product in the top-selling, history-making franchise. For the first time ever, Mortal Kombat will be going online and full product details will be unveiled at a special, invitation only event the Tuesday night before E3. On the show floor, Midway will also be showing off a near final version of the much anticipated Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and the first-person action thriller Area 51, which will feature online play for up to 16 players.

Going where no previous James Bond game has dared to tread, the upcoming GoldenEye: Rogue Agent first-person shooter from Electronic Arts breaks all the rules by transporting players to the dark side of the Bond universe to experience life as a high-rolling, cold-hearted villain. The highly anticipated game is scheduled to ship later this year 2004, on the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube under the EA GAMES brand.

Today the German middleware developer Trinigy GmbH announced that it just signed its first licensing deal in the Asian entertainment market. The Chinese company Tianjin Naga Digital Software Development, located close to Peking, purchased a full license of the versatile and powerful Vision Game Engine for the development of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Ground Control 2 : Operation Exodus takes place during the year 2741 AD, roughly 300 years after the events in the original game. The democratic and freedom caring Northern Star Alliance (NSA) is being hard pressed by the warmongering Terran Empire. The war has recently entered a new stage; a brutal and deadly ground war, as the Empire has managed to land their first troopships on the last NSA controlled planet – Morningstar Prime...

Lagsters is an arcade racing title, where the action takes place in closed environments - tubes. The player will be able to use a vast number of different weapons and upgrades to their cars to become the winner of one of the 32 races. The tracks are compiled into 4 different championships of the single player mode. The multiplayer mode will offer three different modes of play: 'Last Man Driving', 'Fox and Hounds' and 'Divided Glory' where up to 8 players may participate in one race.

"Project Freedom" is a space combat game that offers adrenaline pumping gameplay coupled with stunning graphics. The campaign is built around an original storyline that features several unexpected twists and turns. A stand alone tutorial mode and a simple, intuitive user interface let you immerse yourself in the game world without irritating delays. 21 complex missions will provide all players with many hours of exciting entertainment. Read more for some new screens ...

Vivendi Universal will be releasing a playable demo for Massive Entertainments upcoming sci-fi RTS 'Ground Control II' on May 25th. This single-player demo will feature two tutorial missions (you play as Captain Angelus, who is trying to force the Terrans out of Newstone) , one campaign mission ("Calling the Shots," where you assault the Terran base at Gideon's Landing)and will weigh in at just below 200mb. Of course we will have it available on our fileservers as soon as it becomes available...

The official Etrom: The Astral Essence website has put up notice that "The project is officially delayed to Q4 2004." Etrom is an epic adventure among realms and cities, democracies and “nazi” dictatorships, a journey through space-time portals, among the Thrones of the Abyss, beyond the gates of the City of Light and many more locations, situations, rituals, secret-services plots, dark spells.

Vivendi has closed down famed NASCAR developer Papyrus (along with all their other East Coast Studios). The VUGames forum has the following about it : "Yes, Papyrus has closed up shop for good. Sorry, but it is true. The last time I asked a few weeks back, the statement was that multiplayer will continue to be fully supported. Nothing has been said to change this, but we are asking again to be sure. The reason parts are still down is they physically moved the servers from Boston to LA. The bugs arn't worked out yet."