In addition to the news we brought you earlier about the release date for ET:QW and the pile of id Software games available on Steam, here's a summary of details presented as part of co-founder and technical director John Carmack's annual keynote speech from QuakeCon, and an additional presentation from CEO, Todd Hollenshead:

New game - Rage!
New game engine - id Tech5!
Quake Arena Arcade on Xbox Live!
Quake Zero for free!
New Wolfenstein game in development!
QuakeCon 2008!

...and Return to Castle Wolfenstein to make its way to the big screen!

id Software is undeniably a video game industry and pop-culture leader. Earlier this year, we brought you news from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference that John Carmack had been onstage with Steve Jobs, showing off his latest games engine, id Tech5.

At the time, the images being shown - dune buggies racing around seemingly post-apocalyptic settlements, before the camera zooms in on a first-person perspective on a conversation with a merchant - were promised to us at E3 this year. We were meant to see evidence of the engine (running more than 20GB of texture information, mind you) running in realtime on not only the Mac as it was there, but also on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

E3 came and went - no demonstration.

It finally arrived today, at QuakeCon 2007. Todd Hollenshead, id CEO announced that the images being shown are taken from the game Rage, a brand new IP from id, currently in development for Mac, PC, 360 and PS3, using the second generation of id's "Megatexture" technology. While PS3 gamers will get the title on a single Blu-ray disk - everyone else will have to go back to the days of disk-swapping, this baby's taking up two DVDs.

Announced as a deliberate departure from id's famous corridor shooters, Rage will be "60 percent shooting and 40 percent driving" as you move between villages in a far-future Earth, where civilisation has been almost wiped out after a comet collided with the planet. Players are given the task to help the inhabitants of various villages, while fighting against an oppressive regime... and fending off those pesky mutants and monsters that roam the world.

Rage lead designer Tim Willits explains that the game's title has a triple meaning:

"You're fighting against a post-apocalyptic goverment, so you're raging against the machine," he said. "Then there's driving combat, so there's road rage."

He then adds that "you can't spell garage without 'rage,'", explaining that the game will feature shops for players to customise their own vehicles, making their own unique rides.

Of course - you don't like the car, you don't have to stay in it. Feel free to exit te vehicles and explore the landscape and the many caves in the open-world elements of the title. At this stage, the single-player campaign should check in at about 20 hours, while multiplayer campaigns will provide co-op modes that should help out. While obviously there will be more multiplayer aspects, none have been revealed at this stage.

Further moving on from their blood-and-guts Doom and Quake history, Rage is being developed with a "T-for-Teen" rating in mind. No word on any timeframe for this - it'll ship "when it's done" - as if you were expecting anything different?


Early screens from Rage
Hopefully arriving somewhat earlier, Xbox 360 fans get their quick 'n' dirty Quake fix, with the announcement of Quake Arena Arcade for Xbox Live Arcade. Still too early to know much about it at this stage, it's being developed by Pi Studios, the same people currently working on the PS2 version of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

This shouldn't be a surprise direction for id - Doom was a breakout success on XBLA when it was released last September. What may be a surprise is that Carmack is happily on the record discussing a next-gen Quake Arena.

"We've already started this where I've pulled a kernel of a team over and we've begun hiring others to eventually make an Id Tech 5 Quake Arena title where it's back to the high-speed action and..."

...hang on - he's already actively planning the next Quake Arena title? Seems that way:

"Quake III: Arena remains my favorite id game because it was so pure a concept. It wasn't our most popular game, but it was popular enough."

If XBLA games, while cheap, aren't cheap enough, you may be more interested in Quake Zero - a free-to-play adaptation of Quake III, to be played in a web browser on either PC or Mac. It's the first project by a new dev team being formed at id, and calls itself an experiement in ad-supported gameplay.

Carmack explains:

"What we're going to do is take the Quake III: Arena code base assets, strip it down and set it up so that its essentially a free Web application [but would still likely be a separate app]. We'd have a community-based service where the game is an accessory to the Web site rather than being a standalone thing. Chunk it up for easy, quick installs, and see what we can do with sponsorships and advertising in-game. Quake Zero for zero cost. We'd try and polish it a little, but this isn't a flashy game. Many pro-gamers turn down the settings for improved performance. At this point we've got a game that'll run on every computer. We'll set it up so that it's easy to jump in and try new things. The useful thing is that we're bloodying this team of six coders, deploying Quake Zero and seeing what happens. We're going to lose money on it one way or the other, but this could help us learn even more about what people give a damn about. Personally, I'd like to see five million people give it a try and any lessons learned would find their way into that Id Tech 5 version with all the bells and whistles. This could be a great beta testbed to see what works and what doesn't. It could be huge...or it could bomb -- but I think it'll be helpful to us in the long run. That's what I care about."

After the title is completed, the same team will then be set to work on a complete new Quake title, to be built on the new id Tech 5 engine. Rather than try a sink-or-swim theory of throwing a bunch of people into a development studio, id have designed Quake Zero to try and get everyone working well together before trying their hand at a full game.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Now. There were two announcements about the Wolfenstein franchise. Firstly - apparently there's a "new Wolfenstein" ...but nobody seems to know what's going on with it. We'll keep our ears open for that one, because I guess the big news for the series is the fact it's being made into a movie.

Roger Avary won an Academy Award for his screen-writing work on Pulp Fiction, and his previous directorial work includes The Rules of Attraction, Killing Zoe and the upcoming Beowulf. He's now also been confirmed as the writer and director of the film project for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. While the film version of Doom maybe didn't perform as well as expected, this one's got some pretty decent credentials behind it. The combination of Avary and producer Samuel Hadida (who worked on the Resident Evil series of films) was behind last year's Silent Hill adaptation, and this time Avary's in the director's chair, taking over from Christophe Gans.

...from its humble beginnings, a few mates who hung out in the #quake channel on EFnet IRC deciding to get together, QuakeCon has grown into one of the major events in the gaming calendar. This weekend saw the con, now in its 12th year, attract an estimated 7,000+ attendees, with 2,700 of those taking part in the BYOC competition. It's little surprise then, that QuakeCon 08 has already been announced - in the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas, from July 31st - August 3rd, 2008. Hopefully that's enough notice to ensure nothing else pops up on that weekend!