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.

A new development studio has been launched - fronted by ex-Team 17, Ocean and Infogrames veteran, Jon Oldham, and fifteen members of Acclaim's Manchester studio, who were working on Interview With a Made Man. Fund4Games has secured the rights & assets to the title, and SilverBack Studios have reprised development for current and next-gen consoles, and it is now scheduled for 2006. Read more for details ...

Valve and Vivendi today announced the settlement of a pending federal court lawsuit filed by Valve in August 2002. The parties have resolved their differences, and the settlement provides for the dismissal of all claims and counterclaims. VUG will cease distribution of retail packaged versions of Valve's games, including Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source, effective August 31, 2005, and notify distributors and cyber cafes that were licensed by VUG that only Valve is authorized to distribute Valve games to cyber cafés and grant cyber café licenses. All previous license agreements made by Vivendi are being terminated. Needless to say, settlement or not, this is a huge win for Valve.

Already revealed a few months ago, Nival Interactive today officially announced Hammer & Sickle, a new tactical role playing game set in the Silent Storm universe. The game is being co-developed by Novik&Co and Nival Interactive.