Game industry business news

All-girl professional gaming group Frag Dolls have called it a day after 11 years on the scene. The professional gaming team has throughout that time included 22 separate members as it strove to combat the idea that games are only for boys – an idea that has over the course …

The Witcher 3 is once again No.1 in the UK All Formats Top 40. It manages this in spite of a 69 per cent decline in sales this week, but outsold this week’s No.2, Nintendo’s Splatoon, by a large degree. Splatoon in fact had the biggest ever launch of a …

The way in which Sony handles victims of account fraud on PSN could be about to change. The BBC’s consumer show Watchdog last week highlighted two problems with Sony’s fraud response measures. The first is that it has been refusing to refund content that has been purchased by third parties …

Google Android could be the operating system that Nintendo chooses to power its in-development NX console, reports from Japan suggest. Analyst Dr Serkan Toto said of a report in Nikkei: It says that this is not confirmed but that the source says it’s a possibility driven by Nintendo’s need to …

The leader of the Melbourne IGDA chapter Giselle Rosman took away the first MCV Pacific Woman of the Year prize. Rosman was among four winners at the event, presented by Xbox. Other winners from the night included GoodGame’s Janet Carr, who picked up the Ambassador prize, while Widget’s Leena van …

Bioshock Infinite has sold 11m copies and the Bioshock franchise as a whole has sold more than 25m, according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick. Speaking at a conference in New York that GameSpot attended, Zelnick explained the 2K Games series has been a crucial piece for the company’s success. "It’s …

Horror-focused indie studio Frictional Games has announced its upcoming sci-fi release SOMA will arrive this September. The game has been in development at the studio for nearly five years, and will be Frictional’s first release since its hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent in 2010 (its 2013 sequel A Machine for …

GameStop has reported better-than-expected quarterly results for the period concluded at the beginning of May. Total revenue for the three-month stretch was up 3.2 per cent to $2.06bn, while net income jumped 8.5 per cent to $73.8m. The American retail chain also boasted a 17 per cent increase in operating …

Konami will be doing more in the mobile games market, but it is not abandoning its console business. This comes from a fully translated version of the Nikkei interview with Konami president Hideki Hayakawa. A summary of the interview had already been translated earlier this month, and it seemed to …

Though the soul of eSports growth in the past few decades has been a grassroots community, the heart has certainly been increasing sponsorship. According to this year’s Newzoo report, 30 percent of revenue in the industry comes from sponsors – almost identical to the 31 percent seen in traditional sports. …