Forthcoming Tribes Exodus?
Last year was a rough time for everyone inside of Sierra On-Line, with the cancellation of numerous projects.  One of those projects cancelled literally at the last minute was StarSiege: Tribes: Extreme, the promised single-player add-on to Tribes.  Well, word has now leaked out that Dynamix, the subsidiary behind Tribes, has been slowly losing many of the developers over the past few months, including Tribes Executive Producer Jeff Tunnell.   Now, Tunnell has surfaced with a new company based in Oregon, GarageGames, with business model that sounds like a new take on the Gathering of Developers concept of independent development.  However, once you click around the site it soon becomes clear that most of the company is likely to be comprised of the Tribes developers under a new guise.  For instance, the management page (read it here) doesn't reveal three of the principals in the company, rather only stating: " Name to be revealed after he finishes the amazing sequel to an award-winning online game."   Although one would doubt the entire Tribes team is about to Dynamix after Tribes 2 is complete, it looks like the Tribes team will soon be minus a few key developers.

Microsoft's X-Box
In what has to be one of the worst kept secrets in gaming history, Bill Gates will unveil Microsoft's new X-Box console next Thursday at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.  First hinted at in a Next Generation article last December, it's going to be very interesting to have Microsoft as a major player in the home console market, going head to head with Sony.   Despite the fact that Gates said earlier this year that "Microsoft isn't in the hardware business," all indications are that Microsoft will bring the X-Box to market later this year, head to head with Sony's PlayStation 2 (it's  on the cover of this week's Newsweek).  

With news of Nintendo's Dolphin being delayed until 2001 (can anyone say they are surprised?), the real loser here may be Sega; the company will be hard-pressed to compete with the power of Sony and Microsoft.  If anything, the X-Box will finally bridge the gap between PC and console development.  It remains to be seen how many of Sony's third parties Microsoft can get on board in time for launch, but I'm betting that we will see a lot of PC developers not typically associated with console development on Microsoft's list of development partners next week.  

  Next, find out about a new Homeworld game, and the 3D engine wars >>>

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