El33tonline’s gamescom team got back from Germany early this week, and while we were away we were extremely busy attending developer demonstrations of unreleased games and roaming the halls of the Koelnmesse (… in Cologne), unable to spare even a moment to look over what’s been happening in the world of videogames.

And there’s been quite a bit happening, by the looks of it, but there are a few news stories in particular that we’d like to catch up on. A new version of Counter-Strike? A new design for the Wii? A delay for Kinect Star Wars?

Let’s take a look:

A new entry to the 25 million unit-selling Counter-Strike series was officially announced by Valve Software and developer Hidden Path Entertainment, and will be called Counter-Strike: Global Offensive when it releases in early 2012… or Counter-Strike: GO… or even CS: GO, whichever you prefer.

This upcoming update to the team-based online first-person shooter series will be available on PC, Mac, PS3 and Xbox 360 via digital download over Steam, PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE Arcade respectively, and is said to “expand upon the team-based action gameplay that [Counter-Strike] pioneered when it was launched exactly 12 years ago.”

New maps, characters and weapons will be included in CS: GO, while updated versions of classic Counter-Strike maps (including de_dust) will feature. New gameplay modes, matchmaking, leaderboards “and more” will also enhance the game’s suite of online features.

Additionally, Valve’s Gabe Newell has intriguingly revealed that CS: GO cross-platform play (across PS3, Xbox 360, Mac and PC) is a goal for the developer, despite platform holders’ reticence to allow online interactions between consoles. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

CS: GO will be playable for the first time at PAX Prime this month.

While it was amazing to finally get to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 at gamescom this month, one of the bigger reveals at the show was that the PC version of the game would enjoy the inclusion of dedicated servers – a feature that was desperately missing in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

This omission in Infinity Ward’s last Call of Duty game brought the ire of the entire competitive PC gaming scene down on the studio, as well as Activision, with boycotts planned and petitions signed, all in an effort to ensure dedicated servers were included in the final version of Modern Warfare 2.

They weren’t, but Infinity Ward seem to want to do right by the PC community this time around, and Call of Duty Elite developer Beachhead revealed in its gamescom presentation that Modern Warfare 3 will indeed include dedicated server options to allow online PC gamers a lot more freedom in the way they play the game competitively.

Microsoft and Gas Powered Games’ free-to-play Age of Empires Online went live earlier this month, successfully delivering a classic Age of Empires experience to an entirely new generation of gamers, combined with a host of social tools to make indulging in the series better (and more addictive) than ever before.

As a free-to-play social strategy game, Age of Empires Online is supported by the purchase of new in-game content, such as civilizations and visual accoutrements, which range from $20 to $5 in price. To help you save a little cash while you play Age of Empires Online, you can invest in the ‘Season Pass’ for $99 and get a 30 percent saving on all available content for the next six months.

Read El33tonline’s review of Age of Empires Online to see if you’ll be interested in such an offer (if you enjoy Age of Empires and strategy games, there’s a good chance you will be!).

Nintendo recently announced a newly redesigned Wii, which will become available later this year in time for the busy ‘Holiday’ shopping season. Not only will the new console look different to the traditional vertically standing Wii (with more of a box look and harsher edges), but it’s also designed to stand horizontally, sitting flat on a surface.

To make way for this new version of the Wii, the previous model will phased out. Additionally, the redesigned Wii won’t support backwards compatibility, which means that GameCube games and peripherals won’t work with the console.

The new Wii (in white) will be made part of a bundle which will include Wii Sports and Wii Party, as well as a Wii Remote Plus Controller and Nunchuck.

For now, this redesigned Wii is only slated for release in Europe, and releases dates and prices will be announced in the coming months.

I was personally very excited to hear that EA and DICE’s Battlefield 3 will include an awesome co-operative mode to let you and a friend play through extremely intense singleplayer-inspired missions together, and I was fortunate enough to get to try out this mode in the military-themed first-person shooter for myself at gamescom (look forward to that hands-on preview soon!).

So it’s with a little disappointment that the publisher and developer pair have revealed that there will be no split-screen support for this co-op mode, and that you’ll only be able to play this gametype online on a peer-to-peer basis (as opposed to a server based connection).

Quite disappointing, but it could be necessary so as not to compromise the quality of the visuals in order to render two scenes on one console simultaneously.

Microsoft has today confirmed that Kinect Star Wars has been delayed past the game’s original release window of ‘Holiday 2011,’ in order to “ensure the full potential of this title is realised.”

In a statement, a spokesperson continued:

“This move applies to both the Kinect Star Wars stand-alone game and the Kinect Star Wars Limited Edition Console. We will communicate additional timing information at a later date.”

El33tonline managed to see Kinect Star Wars at gamescom this month, as well as at Microsoft’s Play Day, and we can say that a delay is most definitely necessary in order to iron out the action adventure game’s twitchy, unresponsive Kinect-based gameplay.

At Microsoft’s Play Day in particular, the demonstration for Kinect Star Wars was a bit of a disaster as the demo units constantly froze up and failed to respond to the gestures offered by players, while the Kinect controller pod racing game didn’t fair any better.

As Star Wars fans (and gamers who desperately want a great Star Wars game), we hope Microsoft and developer Terminal Reality are able to fix the kinks in Kinect Star Wars and create something truly memorable – congrats to the pair for delaying the title instead of simply shoving it out in its current state.

Sn33ky News is El33tonline’s attempt to catch up with items of interesting and/or important and/or specific videogame information that may have become overshadowed by other more pertinent news, to help keep you informed with one great big dollop of collected trailers, screenshots and official information. Eat slowly.