Sometimes there are announcements that fit under the category "Jaw Dropper." On Monday afternoon, a source informed us that Diamond was being bought but the source didn't state who the purchaser was. As gamers, we wrestled with several options and put our bets on nVidia making an announcement that it would be buying Diamond. First thing on Tuesday morning, I checked around and saw the announcement that S3 had bought Diamond. After 15 minutes of staring in disbelief at my monitor, we started to dig a little deeper into the situation. It appears that Diamond will still sell nVidia TNT2 cards for now, although it seems really odd for S3 to sell its competitor's chipset. Oddly, there was no mention of what the company would be doing with audio. Right now, Diamond is the biggest supplier of Aureal chips in its Monster Sound cards. Without Diamond, Aureal loses a big chunk of change. While Aureal hasn't said anything publicly, relations between the two companies have been deteriorating for some time. One source says that Aureal folk have been traveling all over the place, and talk of Aureal moving into the retail sector on its own may happen soon. This would be an interesting move for the company after the problems it had when it was still known as Media Vision. Media Vision produced some great cards as primary competition beside SoundBlaster until Media Vision went belly up, renamed itself, and decided to focus on making audio processors. We'll just have to see what happens.

　　While Diamond waits to be pulled into S3, the company announced that it was spinning off its Rio with a new division called RioPort Inc. The idea is simple: make sure the Rio brand is out there and ensure that it has killer support. Diamond's first Rio wasn't perfect but it was amazing at what it did - introduce nongamers and die-hard gadget gurus to MP3 playback. With a new product featuring 64MB of memory, a new look, better LCD screen, and built-in copyright technology - RioPort has the momentum to grow big. Now that Diamond's competitor, Creative Labs, is getting into the MP3 playback circus with its Nomad - let the war begin.

　　Also this week, AMD finally took the wraps off its supposed upcoming Pentium III killer. The name Athlon (code-named K7) may be a little difficult to market, but Intel got away with the Celeron. (I can still say the Celery and everyone still understands what I'm talking about,) The first chips support a 200MHz front side bus, 128k of L1 memory, and runs as high as 600MHz. Now the bad news: You'll either have to buy a new system or a new Slot A motherboard to use an Athlon. Slot A is totally incompatible with Intel's Slot 1. But with a 200MHz FSB (soon to rise to 400MHz), users may rush to the AMD with open wallets for that extra speed boost, as Intel is still stuck with a 100MHz FSB. Yet AMD isn't out of the water yet; early this week ZDNet's ZDNN news service reported that AMD may claim quarterly losses as high as $200 million.

　　After all the wait, Activision has finally released Heavy Gear II. After I talked about Heavy Gear II not attracting the attention of E3 attendees back in May. Activision sent me a copy of Heavy Gear II to try on my own, and after playing for a short time with the late beta, I believe the game will definitely bring fans back to Activision's robot fighter. The game has a completely different feel from Heavy Gear. Action is more often than not the name of the game as Gear II takes on a more first-person-shooter approach than the original. Expect to see a Heavy Gear II complete review soon on GameSpot for a full status report.

　　South Park sells no matter what. With its lovable characters, Kenny's weekly and inevitable demise, and witty one-liners, it really is no wonder gamers have embraced South Park in a big way. Acclaim is taking the gang to trivia land with South Park: Chef's Luv Shack. We can't wait to see what the company cooks up.

　　Rumors of Xatrix Entertainment's demise have yet to be fully confirmed. Talk on the Web is that after it finished compiling Kingpin, the company fired everybody. Two good sources have told us that Xatrix has indeed fallen through, and its president and CEO, Drew Markham, left the company and let it fall apart. All the employees have been scurrying around the LA area looking for new positions, and several calls to Markham's line at Xatrix have yet to be returned. We've heard some pretty nasty stories behind the Xatrix breakup. Once we have a full view of what may have happened, we'll let you know.