Game industry business news

Ten million sales of Diablo III and strong Skylanders performance raises full-year expectations to nearly £3bn

Square Enix and E-xpress Interactive hosted a preview even for Hitman: Absolution in Mumbai last night. Present at the event was Square Enix’s export marketing manager Anthony Newall, who presented a gameplay demo from Absolution as well as a brief gameplay snippet from Tomb Raider. Demos aside, Newall also presented …

UK supermarket chain Asda has come in for criticism over its Christmas TV campaign. Running under the slogan ‘Behind every great Christmas, there’s Mum’, the short sees a mother seemingly struggling alone to prepare the Christmas Day festivities as the rest of the family wait on. Both women’s and men’s …

Snake’s quarter-century celebrations aren’t over yet. Retailers have outed a fresh surprise from Kojima Productions. Several online stores, including ShopTo and Zavvi, have posted listings for Metal Gear Solid 4: 25th Anniversary Edition, a new SKU for the acclaimed 2008 release. There is some debate as to what the price …

Ubisoft has released a story trailer for its upcoming shooter Far Cry 3. The publisher has also announced that the game has gone gold, meaning that production will have started on the title ahead of its November 30th UK release date. Ubisoft told MCV last month that it has high …

There’s no hiding the impact that digital games is having on retail. The sales decline seen this year may be driven by the aging console cycle and the economic downturn. But the fact that more games are coming out digitally and fewer are released physically is having an effect. Games …

The subscription MMO is dead, is it? That’s what many would have you believe. But it appears that Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft isn’t sticking to the script. Subscriber numbers for the game have risen beyond the 10m mark once more, having dipped to 9.1m in the company’s last financial …

Activision Blizzard has announced its financial figures for Q3 2012, with the firm showing increases seemingly across the board. The publisher reports $841m earned in net revenue during the period ending on September 30th. The total outshines both its outlook of $740m and the $754m made during the same period …

Microsoft has revealed the Gears of War series has surpassed 19m units sold. The firm reported the figure to Joystiq, with the site adding that the franchise had sold 1m copies alone since July. While Microsoft wouldn’t share specific figures on Gears of War 3, it was previously mentioned that …

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm won’t be making its official release until sometime after the holidays. Blizzard president Mike Morhaime announced during the company’s earnings call that the studio is hoping to have the next chapter in the Starcraft franchise out sometime before the end of June next year. …