Sega Games' latest entry to the Total War series was announced earlier this year, and now we know when it will be out along with more launch and order information. Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is, as expected, a turn-based real time strategy game and is set during the Three kingdoms time period in China (~190-280 C.E.). Fans of the Dynasty Warriors series will find familiar names and factions listed here, with players set to control one of 11 different factions led by warlords including Cao Cao, Lu Bu, Sun Jian and others. The game will launch first on Windows OS (on Steam) followed by MacOS and Linux support later next summer.

Despite the game being over 5 months from launch, we already have pre-orders available and that also comes with exclusive pre-order game content in the form of the Yellow Turban rebellion that precedes the main game and delves into the peasant rebellion against the Han dynasty. Whether you are a fan of this practice or not, you can check out the trailer below. The game itself is up forpre-order on Steam now for $60, and there is also a collector's edition for all of $160 which includes more content as seen here. As always, we caution against pre-ordering games- especially ones that announced pre-order DLC in advance.

SEGA Europe Ltd. today announced the launch of the new campaign DLC Empire Divided for Total War: ROME II. Empire Divided plunges players into the crisis of the third century, a do-or-die era for the Roman Empire. Players can embrace challenge of unifying the disparate Roman factions in glory - or playing as one of Rome's enemies, and dealing the killing blow.

Empire Divided breathes new life into ROME II, with 10 different playable factions, new victory conditions and new campaign features for players to contend with such as plagues, cults and banditry. Empire Divided also has a big narrative focus, as it chronicles the journeys of the characters and powers involved in this turbulent and fascinating time.

Sega is continuing to reach into its back catalog, and fans are loving it. The latest HD remaster from the house of Sonic is the Saturn classic, Nights into Dreams. The digital re-release will be available on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Windows PC this fall. The updated version adds widescreen HD graphics, as well as support for leaderboards, trophies, and achievements. The original game will be available to play in "Saturn Mode," just in case you're not fond of the sharper graphics and textures.

Electronic Arts (EA) Inc. announced today that SEGA will bring its most popular PC game titles to Origin, EA's direct-to-consumer gaming platform. SEGA's Total War Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai is now available for pre-order to PC gamers on Origin.

In addition to SEGA, other new publishers joining Origin today include Team 17 Software Limited, Rebellion, Kalypso Media Digital Ltd. and more, bringing the number of game publishers and developers on Origin to 35 partners. PC downloadable titles from each of these partners will be available on Origin in the coming months.

Today IGN is showing off their exclusive Aliens: Colonial Marines Cinematic trailer for the PC, Xbox360 and the PS3. Sadly no real gameplay is shown but its a beautifully rendered sequence that shows in essence a star ship or a foreign colony of Earth infested with Xenomorphs. From what is gathered of this trailer is as a player you will be playing with a group of people and not a lone soldier as previous games in the franchise have played out. Time will tell if the trailer holds true to the game with its creepy music and dark mood. One thing is certain, H.R. Giger would be proud.The cinematic trailer follows.

Valve, a company that operates solely online, takes its security pretty seriously and has a good reputation in this area. However, at the time of writing, its Steam forums are down, having suffered a hack attack earlier today. Visit the forums now and you see a message saying "The Steam Forums are temporarily offline for maintenance. Your patience is appreciated." This attack was apparently done by hackers who want to offer free game cheats (but one should be wary of stealthy malware payloads) since before the forums were taken down, they had planted this message:

Ever wanted to dominate the servers you play on with guaranteed results, but you were too afraid to cheat because of ban risks?

The rest of the message then recommends a website where one can obtain all sorts of illegal game cheats, hack tools and porn. Some Steam forum users even received an email with this text, such as this NeoGAF user. There's no indication that any user's account information has been compromised. However, if you haven't yet set up Steam Guard, now is a good time to do so, along with changing your password when the forums come back online. Also, be sure to use different a password for every login. Of course, many other gaming forums have been hacked in the past and just this year saw many hacks against such big names as Nintendo, Sega, BioWare, Epic Games and of course Sony, which was hacked many times over in protest at their business practices, such as removing the OtherOS feature from their PS3 console.

Game publisher Codemasters yesterday announced plans to acquire Sega's UK Racing Studio. Previous owner Sega recently announced its intent to close the studio, citing a mandate to ensure each branch remained profitable. "In seizing this opportunity, we have created additional resources to escalate our plans in the racing segment," stated Codemasters chief executive Rod Cousens. "We hope to welcome more than 40 people to the company ... We have enjoyed the full co-operation of our friends at Sega in making this happen," he continued. "It is good business for Codemasters, an exciting prospect and there will be more to come as we are not content to stand still." Most likely both publishers will concentrate their development skills in releasing a new versions of the well known Codemasters' Colin McRae and Race Driver racing games.

Sega and Valve today announced an agreement to deliver a lineup of new Sega titles to customers around the world via Steam. The new Sega games coming to Steam include Universe at War: Earth Assault, The Golden Compass, Sega Rally Revo, Sega Revo, Worldwide Soccer Manager, Futbol Manager and more. In addition to the new games, Sega titles previously released on Steam to customers in North America, such as Medieval II: Total War and Rome: Total War, are now available to Steam gamers in Europe and most of the world. For pricing information and release dates on these and other Sega titles, please click here.

SEGA has announced their latest release in the Total War RTS series, "Empire: Total War". The time period is set in the 18th century during the British Industrial Revolution and includes other epic historic events such as America's fight for independence and the conquest for control of the Eastern Trade routes.

Are you a fan of superhero video games? If so, I've got some good news for you! The Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Thor are all coming to various consoles. This is because Sega and Marvel have agreed to partner up to help milk the franchises to their limit make the best video games possible. With the comic genius of Marvel, and the programming prowess of Sega, we should see some seriously impressive games coming from Sega studios soon. Unfortunately, we're not going to see these games for a while. We're only at the "agree to hand over licenses of characters" stage. Actual programming of the games will happen over the course of the year, and we should start seeing new games by June 2008.

While some hardcore fans of the Sonic series would claim that Sega has already done this several times, Sega is claiming that they will re-invent Sonic. The main reason that they are doing this is very simple. While Sega is making a ton of money off these games, they feel like they are disappointing all the hardcore Sonic fans. And so, by completely redesigning the character in accordance with their fans' desires, they hope to regain the confidence of the hardcore-Sonic-fan crowd.