The big news this week came from the Computer Game Developer's Conference in Long Beach, Calif. The primary focus of CGDC is to sway game developers as they pick and choose what new hardware they plan to support in their games. With all the impressive video and sound cards being shown on the floor at CGDC, it is hard to wrap up all the great things about each of them (but we'll try).

　　Along with seeing some the big names in gaming (Perry, Meier, Romero, and Hook to name a few), just wandering the floor and checking out the hardware beside you is a great feeling. As is eavesdropping as those in the know talk to developers about what their products can and cannot do.

　　Video cards are coming to market with a wide new range of features - and many of the cards are becoming almost indistinguishable from each other. Companies like 3Dfx, Matrox, ATI, S3, Intel, and Diamond are flooding the market with new product.

　　The war on "the other" has started raging as well. We speak of audio cards and specifically 3D audio. It's becoming a hot commodity, and although it is tough to tell what sounds the best from inside a booth in a massive and acoustically challenged hall, you can definitely hear what companies are talking about. Yes, there is a new world of PC audio coming up.

　　Although most of the big news this week was related in some way to CGDC, there were definitely other news makers - both on and off the floor - to be heard. Computer Gaming World introduced a new scale for rating 3D game accelerators called 3D GameGauge. GameGauge should make it a lot easier for people to decide which 3D accelerator they want based on the card's actual scoring when paired with particular games. News of interest to insiders: Microsoft lifted the floodgates off its new DirectX 6.0 API for developers at CGDC. We should start seeing the fruits of MS' labor sometime around Christmas.

　　On the releases side of things, Diamond Multimedia released its new Monster Sound MX200 sound card with four-speaker support and Aureal compatibility. It also released its new 12MB Monster 3D II Voodoo2-based graphics accelerator.

　　Diamond had a great four-player network area with Unreal playing. The graphics were looking mighty crisp. On the software side, Shiny's grand pooh-bah Dave Perry showed of the latest build of the controversial game engine Messiah. IMHO, the engine looks absolutely amazing but gameplay looks like it could be a tough sell. It's targeted for an adult audience: Hookers with lifelike parts aren't really meant for the younger crowd (or so it is said) and it might be difficult for many to make the departure from standard gameplay into the realm of possessing people and using them as characters.

　　We'll see what else develops as the gaming industry gets closer to E3.

　　Microsoft's popular strategy title Age of Empires isn't going to get a version 2.0 this year, according to a joint announcement from Ensemble Studios and Microsoft. GameSpot News attended a CGDC programming conference titled Programming Games Under Windows. In it Ensemble's AOE designer Matt Pritchard talked about some of the trials and tribulations associated with building the first title. Although Pritchard didn't talk much about AOE II, he did talk a little about the recent events with the networking problems under DirectPlay and how Ensemble had to custom build parts of the code that Microsoft didn't use in the final release of DirectX 5.0. He also mentioned how AOE was a big reason for Microsoft releasing 5.0a to the public - which was done to alleviate problems with AOE brought on because MS changed the DirectX code.

　　On the floor at CGDC, we got to take a look at an early version of a set-top box running Windows CE. From all the buzz in the programming community, you're going to be hearing more about CE as it matriculates over into other realms that will give laptops some hefty competition, as an integrated OS for car radios, and into the cable and TV world with set-top boxes like the one we saw from ATI.

　　In the larger picture, Sega, a company who is rumored to be using a version of CE for its new console Katana, is getting ready to build its first original title for the PC. Usually, Sega has a title that does well on its Sega Saturn or in the arcades and then ports that title to the PC as an afterthought. This might be a good step for the company, considering much of the underlying technology associated with building PC games on Windows 95 is the same technology used in Windows CE.