Game industry business news

Iconic games developer Jade Raymond has confirmed that she is heading up the team working on Splinter Cell 6. The game is currently in development at Ubisoft’s Toronto studios, with 83 people having already been hired for the project. In a promotional Ubisoft video we’re told that concept artists, animators …

The 800-capacity Toronto base now has 83 staff ahead of schedule

As any keen gamer will know, this last Q4 has proved very expensive for anyone looking to buy all of the big console releases – and one of the co-founders of BioWare thinks it’s a big problem. There’s too many games released today,” Ray Muzyka told sister site Develop. It’s …

The men behind Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay have lost their latest appeal against their prosecution for piracy. The court ruled that Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom facilitated illegal file-sharing in a way that results in criminal liability for those who run the service. It added: For …

England and Chelsea defender Ashley Cole is the latest celebrity to have his love for gaming outed, with tabloid The Sun claiming that the former husband of Cheryl Cole spends up to five hours a night playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. Ashley has really put in the hours since …

It’s not surprising that PC gamers turned to different methods of distribution, and that Steam has filled that need perfectly. Not just providing a well stocked distribution platform, but a whole social network for enthusiast gamers who were not getting supported elsewhere as their hobby went mainstream. What is more …

I have read with interest the article ‘Retailers blow off Steam’, as the topic is one I have been focussed on for some time now. Three years ago, I requested of that the 1C management team negotiate and retain the digital rights to all our titles, even when we sell …

The growing aspirations of Western games in key Japanese markets have received another shot in the arm with confirmation that Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops has claimed the top spot in this week’s Japanese software charts. The PS3 version of the game shifted 129k units this week, driving it …

For Ubisoft, the world is its oyster when it comes to Assassin’s Creed. The franchise’s latest game is flying off shelves in Europe, and the series is a global powerhouse selling 20m. Meanwhile the storyline profiles a team researching the genetic memory of an assassin – so the franchise can …

Twelve months after Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada predicted the demise of physical media, another games industry stalwart has declared that the days of packaged games are numbered. John Carmack, one of the most respected and longstanding game programmers in the world, believes digital distribution is the natural and inevitable …