We have already mentioned that Will Wright will be making his first appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con next week to promote their upcoming evolution sim Spore. Now it looks like he will be doing more than just showing off the long anticipated game. He will also be demoing a new Spore related application that actually does related to comic books.

According to a just updated listing on the official Comic-Con web site. Wright will not only demo Spore but also show off the MashON Spore Comic Book Creator. This newly revealed application will allow people to make a comic book story starring your custom Spore creature. There's no word yet on if this will be a separate application or one that will be included with the game.

Earlier this month Empire Interactive announced it was looking for a buyer to sell off its Razerworks development studio as part of a reduction of its staff. Well, it looks like it has a customer as UK based independent game developer Rebellion has announced it has acquired Razorworks for an undisclosed amount.

It sounds like Rebellion won't be keeping the actual Razerworks offices but instead will move the 30 person dev team (best known for their Ford Racing games) over to Rebellion's Oxford studio. This isn't the first time such a deal has been made between Rebellion and Empire Interactive. In 2006 Rebellion purchased Empire's Strangelight studios as well.

E3 2008 is over now but it appears the reactions to the latest edition of the event were even worse than last year's E3 in Santa Monica, and that's saying something. The latest to state these facts is Dennis McCauley, the editor of GamePolitics in his latest Political Game column for our sister site Joystiq.

McCauley points out that Into the Pixel, the video game art exhibit, got more square footage at the convention center than the actual game exhibit hall where people went hands-on with a number of titles.That and a number of other issues mentioned in the opinion piece made the show the worst it has ever been and if McCauley is to be believed, " . . . you can go ahead and schedule that trip to the beach you were planning for next July. You won't be coming to Los Angeles.E3 is dead."

Our very last E3 2008 appointment was, ironically, not at the Los Angeles Convention Center but at a nearby hotel. Deep underneath the hotel's meeting room was host to BioWare's long awaited next fantasy RPG Dragon Age Origins. The game was first announced and shown in a very early form over four years ago at E3 2004 (when it was called simply Dragon Age) so we were expecting to be wowed by this new version.

Dragon Age Origins represents a bit of a return to BioWare's PC gaming roots. After releasing the first Neverwinter Nights title BioWare went in a console direction creating the Xbox RPG games Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire and more recently the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect (all three games were eventually ported to the PC). Bioware also got a new owner in Electronic Arts. So its good that for at least this title (and perhaps the rumored Star Wars MMO that BioWare Austin is making) the developer will return to making PC games as their first platform of choice.

(Editor's note: this article is based on seeing a live demo of the Xbox 360 port of the game)

Electronic Arts is aiming to do something different for their upcoming titles Dead Space. While it has released a few "M" rated games in the recent past like Army of Two, The Godfather and others, this is the first real horror game EA has released since, well, the terrific and underrated first person shooter Clive Barker's Undying. Dead Space is also EA's first excursion into the survival horror genre which means it's going up against two of Konami's big franchises, Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

At EA 2008,we got to see a demo of the game being played which showed off some of Dead Space's more unique elements. The game's setting is certainly different than Konami's titles. It takes place in the far future where humanity has broken the light speed barrier and traveled to the stars. Your player character is an engineer who is sent to find out why one starship hasn't reported back in a while. He reaches his destination only to find that in space, people can indeed hear you scream if you happen to be in a space suit with a radio.

If the original Command and Conquer timeline is a fairly standard sci-fi affair and C&C Generals is a more realistic near future storyline, then Electronic Arts' Red Alert franchise is all about comic book goofiness and fun. The alternate history where the Communist Soviet Union is still large and in charge and wild weapons are plentiful will get a revamp this fall with the release of C&C: Red Alert 3.

At E3 2008 we got a chance to go hands-on with a PC build of the game (it's also being released for the Xbox 360) where we got to play as the brand new Red Alert Japanese faction called the Empire of the Rising Sun. The visuals, while in 3D, remain in the style of the first two 2D Red Alert titles. They are colorful yet detailed and are actually quite fun to just look at.

The Creative Assembly's list of historical RTS games in its Total War franchise is extensive with the European middle ages, Rome, and feudal Japan. Now the developer has moved into the 18th century with its latest effort Empire: Total War as the series finally moves to the New World and those pesky American colonists.

At E3 2008, we got to see a quick live game demo on Empire: Total War at Sega's meeting room that focused on the major new feature in this edition of the franchise: high sails naval warfare. If the game concentrated just on this it would still be a game we would look forward to. The fact that it will have both naval and land battles (more on land missions later) has us really excited.

So you think you know what Relic Entertainment is going to do with the full sequel to their acclaimed sci-fi RTS title Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War (based as always on the Games Workshop war game). Better graphics; more units, more visble units in massive battles, right? Isn't that the way sequels usually do things?

Well, yes. That is the standard for sequels to any game: "More of what you liked before, but better." In the case of Dawn of War II, however, Relic and publisher THQ are actually doing things to the game that on the surface look like they are toning things down. We got a chance to observe an live demo of the highly anticipated title at E3 2008 this week.

If you have already registered to attend QuakeCon 2008 (which begins in less than two weeks on July 31) there's some extra good news for you. According to the event's official web site those folks have all been granted access to the beta test for Quake Live, the upcoming free (via in-game ads) version of id Software's multiplayer shooter Quake III Arena.

You are too late if you haven't registered already for QuakeCon but if you did those invites will be going out to 1000 people a day starting sometime next week. QuakeCon will also hold a Quake Live cash tournament during the event which will be held in Dallas from July 31-August 3

In attending Gamecock's non-E3 event at the Hotel Figueroa on Thursday, we got to play a new build of the upcoming first person shooter Legendary. One of the giveaways at the Gamecock event was a free Legendary preview comic book which had the first few pages of an upcoming adaptation of the Spark Unlimited title along with some behind-the-scenes features on the making of the game.

A Spark Unlimited rep stated that they will publish the full graphic novel adaptation later this fall around the time the game itself has been released. The comic book will be written by well-known author Mark Waid, perhaps best known for his work on the classic DC Comics mini-series Kingdom Come as well as long runs on The Flash, Justice League of America and others.

The Uwe Boll directed adaptation of Running With Scissors'sPostal game franchise may have been kept from being released in most movie theaters last May but on August 26 everyone will be able to see the movie in either DVD or Blu-Ray format. The DVD Active web site has posted up the box cover for the release which reveals extras like commentaries, deleted scenes and more.

The release will also come with the full version of the Postal 2 game, the Unreal Engine 2 powered open world shooter that Running With Scissors released several years ago. Running With Scissors and Russian based Akella are currently working on Postal III which should be released in 2009.

It looks like Electronic Arts wants everyone to have access to some Spore. . . the game that is. Today the company announced a deal with AT&T that will give its AT&T High-Speed Internet customers access to not only the free demo version of Spore Creature Creature but will give new customers access to the full paid version of the editor.AT&T mobile customers can now get Spore Origins, the mobile phone game, exclusively on their phones until September 4.

This follows earlier reports that revealed EA is trying to make deals with PC makers to get the Spore Creature Creator installed in new PCs. The actual full game is, of course, still scheduled for release on September 7.

[Via press release]

As we mentioned earlier, Universal Studios has directly commissioned a game based on their recent hit action movie Wanted. It's the first time that the movie studio has made such a movie rather than work with a third party publisher who licensed the rights. Certainly Universal has a ton of properties (both in movies and on TV) that could also get the same treatment.

One such property that immediately pops to mind is Serenity, the movie version of the cult hit sci-fi TV series Firefly. We talked with a Universal Pictures Digital Platform Group rep who attended the Wanted demo and asked if that was a possibility. "It's something we have talked about," he admitted. He said the main thing was to get the involvement of Serenity and Firefly's creator Joss Whedon before proceeding with any plans. However, the fact that the studio has indeed talked about such a project certainly puts a Serenity game in the firm "maybe" column. Some of you may remember that in late 2006 the MMO game development engine studio Multiverse announced they had gotten the MMO rights to the Firefly TV series but since then no news of that game has been revealed.

Every time at E3, there's a game that you have never heard of before you arrive that you get to see and totally surprises you. For us, that game at E3 2008 was Wanted, a title that actually serves as a sequel to the impressive Universal Studios action game based (loosely) on the Top Cow comic book from writer Mark Millar and artist J.G. Jones.

At a last minute appointment during E3 we got to see a quick live demo of the Wanted game at Warner Bros. Interactive's meeting room (the company is distributing the title) on an Alienware PC using an Xbox 360 Windows controller. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, here's a MAJOR SPOILER WARNING as we intend to talk about the ending in the next paragraph

During a press reception for the Games for Windows brand at E3 this week, we learned from Microsoft's marketing manager for the Games for Windows program, Kevin Unangst, that the company plans some major announcements for the Games for Windows and the Games for Windows Live brand for next week at Microsoft's annual Gamefest game developer conference.

One of those announcements could be that Microsoft could finally do away with the "Gold" price of the Games for Windows Live. Up until now players that had games that used Games For Windows Live had to pay extra for things like matchmaking, chat, cross-platform multiplayer and other items. IGN is reporting that at least one upcoming game, THQ's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, will have those "Gold" features in Games for Windows Live free out of the box. At the event we askd Unangst why all of PC titles that used Games for Windows Live couldn't do the same thing and he told us, "There's no reason why they shouldn't." We will be chatting more extensively with Unangst next week about their planned announcements at Gamefest.

One of those announcements will be Direct3D 11, the next version of their graphics API for PC gaming. The Gamesfest schedule shows several panels that will talk directly about Direct3D 11 including its support for Shader Model 5.0.