Welcome to another week here at News Pop!. We're starting this week with a late edition. For those of you who weren't aware, today was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. As such, we had to get things started at night, rather than our usual day time edition. We also hope all of our Jewish readers out there had an easy fast.

EA acquires Digital Illusions

The big news out of Redwood City, California today is that Electronic Arts has acquired Digital Illusions CE (DICE), the development team and creator of the acclaimed Battlefield franchise. Digital Illusions, based in Stockholm, Sweden, will become a fully integrated EA studio dedicated to growing its already popular Battlefield franchise and developing new PC, next gen and other multi-platform titles. The acquisition is effective immediately, so anyone trying to go to DICE's website will, at the moment, not find anything but a coming soon logo. The site should be up again soon.

Unreal Engine 3 grows

The Unreal Engine 3 Integrated Partners Program, run by Epic Games, gained a new partners today. Fonix Speech Inc., a subsidiary of Fonix Corp., which specializes in embedded speech interfaces for mobile devices, systems and processors, will be integrating its Fonix VoiceIn Game Edition into Unreal Engine 3. What this means for licensees of Unreal Engine 3 is that VoiceIn is fully integrated and fully supported for its use within the engine. What this means for gamers depends on what the licensees of the engine decide to do with the features provided in the engine. For more information on Unreal Engine 3 you can check out www.unrealtechnology.com or for more information on Fonix Speech and what games are currently compatible with VoiceIn go to www.fonixspeech.com.

Bethesda Softworks announces Star Trek shipping dates

Bethesda Softworks will be releasing three new Star Trek titles for multiple platforms in the near future, one of which is to be in stores this week. The games are Star Trek: Encounters, Star Trek: Tactical Assault and Star Trek: Legacy. Star Trek: Encounters, releasing tomorrow for the Playstation 2, is an arcade style shooter featuring ships, characters and weapons from the 40 year history of Star Trek. Star Trek: Tactical Assault, shipping October 24^th for the PSP and Nintendo DS, is a real-time spaceship combat game for up to two players. The game will feature a wide array of authentic Star Trek races, ships and weaponry from the original Star Trek series. Star Trek: Legacy, shipping November 7^th for PC and Xbox 360, is an epic Starfleet combat game, covering the entire Star Trek universe. For complete information on these titles, you can check out startrek.bethsoft.com.

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