Game industry business news

Forget video games, Activision is well on its way to establishing a foothold in the toy sector. The firm is talking to retailers and media it has never spoken to before in a bid to ensure Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure is a hit. The game is almost a reboot for the …

OnLive has acknowledged that exclusive content deals will help tempt more consumers to its cloud gaming service. Currently OnLive, which officially launches in the UK on September 22nd, streams PC games from its data servers – and all are either available as standalone PC or multiformat console games too. But …

We’re told time and time again that retail can play an important part in the digital gaming landscape, but one obstacle has always remained – the iron grip platform holders have over digital console platforms. But international games retailer GameStop could be about to shatter that stalemate thanks to new …

We look at the latest TV advertising activity for games targeting men and how it affects web search traffic. This is provided by specialist communication firmGeneration Mediawhich focuses on the entertainment and leisure industries. This week we take a look at the year-on-year weekly marketing dynamics from March 20th to …

PC DRM has again got Ubisoft into a sticky situation with PC gaming fans. The publisher had previously claimed that recent PC release From Dust would only require users to authenticate their copy of the game online the first time it was loaded. However, users have complained that the game …

The ascent of Minecraft studio Mojang knows no bounds – a multi-million dollar franchise, a fanbase to envy, an event and growing merchandise business… And now it’s a third-party publisher too, helping bring another indie studio’s game to market. Mojang has signed up Cobalt from Oxeye Game Studios. It’s the …

There’s a line of thinking which argues PlayStation Vita will struggle on the market due to its inability to compete with smartphone gaming’s low price software model. Not true, according to Sony’s US hardware marketing boss John Koller. We view that as two separate demographics, and we’ve done a lot …

Moshi Monsters Magazine has become the best-selling children’s publication in the UK with a monthly circulation of 113,748. The magazine was launched in February by Skyjack Publishing after it struck a deal with Moshi Monsters creator Mind Candy. It’s based on the popular online monster-collecting kids’ game which has 50m …

The decision to cut the price of the PS3 is not related to market pressures and has been planned for over a year, Sony has said. We see a lot of opportunity in the market, and I want to note that we’ve been planning this price drop for quite some …

Microsoft has announced that the next version of its Windows PC operating system will include an App Store. The company hasn’t detailed anything relating to strategy but did confirm that it has assembled an App Store team as it continues to build its new OS. Of course, Microsoft is no …