Game industry business news

Sony has released the ‘crystal white’ PS Vita as a standalone product, not that the firm is keen on sharing that information. Kotakureports the device has quietly appeared on Amazon for $199, though no other retailers are currently carrying the handheld. Sony, for its part, has provided no details on …

Kickstarter has posted its year in review piece, announcing that the crowdfunding site helped successfully fund nearly 20,000 projects in 2013. Posting on itssite, the company revealed that last year $480m was pledged from 3m accounts. That’s over $1.3m a day, or $913 a minute. Of those 3m individuals, 800,000 …

Livestreaming support on Xbox One is still months away, according to its provider Twitch. The video broadcasting platform’s Twitter account mentioned that the company hasn’t received word from Microsoft on when broadcasting directly on the Xbox One will be enabled. Twitch’s best guess is that the service is still "a …

Sony’s streaming game service PlayStation Now might not necessarily be the warning claxon for retail that some are predicting. Retail already does big business selling digital content, with High Street stores in particular profiting from those customers who lack access to debit and credit cards. One retailer beating the drum …

The Xbox One’s social functionality will be the core focus of the Microsoft’s next software update for the console. The feedback we’ve gotten is pretty valid,” Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten told Engadget. Some of the social stuff is hidden or harder to use than it was on the …

Creative Assembly’s upcoming survival horror outing Alien: Isolation looks unlikely to be making the jump to Wii U. When asked about the possibility on Twitter, the game’s official Twitter account replied: Right now, we don’t have plans to put the game on Wii U.” What makes it all the sadder …

Luigi’s Mansion: 2 developer Next Level Games is more than happy pinning its flag to the Nintendo mast. The Canadian indie is behind a number of Nintendo exclusives such as the Wii version of Punch-Out and Mario Strikers charged. It also developed the Wii versions of Tom Clancy: Ghost Recon …

Microsoft yet to inform Twitch when it will be ready to make the service available on Xbox Live

Customers have ordered over $1m worth of pizza through the Xbox 360’s Pizza Hut app in just four months. "It’s been a source of unbelievable growth for us," Pizza Hut’s PR director Doug Terfehr told Polygon. "Just the explosion of people who wanted to download it, experiment with it, play …

Wrestling fans will soon be able to stream WWE content directly through their consoles. The sports entertainment giant has announced a new service called WWE Network is a ’24/7 streaming service’ that will offer both live events, regular programming such as Raw and Smackdown as well as archived footage. It …