Game industry business news

After what the LA Times describes as a brawl” between Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick and Californian lawyer Patricia Glaser, the outspoken games executive has emerged on the losing side of a three-year court battle. In 2007 a flight attendant named Cynthia Madvig filed a lawsuit in the LA County …

GAME’s iPhone app is one of the most downloaded of its type. The app is one of the Top 20 Free Utilities on iTunes. This week the retailer issued an update to the app that adds the ability to find the nearest GAME via GPS and then get directions through …

Life-to-date sales of Call of Duty map packs have surpassed 20 million units. The numbers take into account all packs released for the franchise on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, including the two Modern Warfare 2 DLC released this year. "The Call of Duty franchise is unique in the world …

Ubisoft’s leftfield range of games for Kinect, 3DS and more will help give consumers a reason to buy new games hardware. The publisher broke the mould at E3 with a number of surprise unveilings for the likes of Your Shape, Michael Jackson and Child of Eden. It was also the …

Microsoft is offering those who have pre-ordered Xbox 360 RPG release Fable III the chance to design an in-game character who will appear in their quest when the game arrives on October 29th. The Fable III Villager Maker, which is accessible via browsers, allows those who have pre-ordered the game …

US games retail giant GameStop wants to exploit the crossover between ‘core’ gamers at retail and ‘casual’ gamers playing online. The firm this week told MCV that it is following customers to the non-console areas they play games in – with the acquisition of Flash games site Kongregate on Tuesday …

He has predicted it, Activision has denied it – but now outspoken US games analyst Michael Pachter has published his most detailed argument yet as to exactly why he believes Call of Duty: Black Ops will offer an additional paid-for multiplayer component. Multiplayer online game play is as strong as …

Game Trading Technologies Inc has announced that it is to launch its first ever games peripheral. Now it has confirmed that it has designed, developed a produced what it describes as a revolutionary plastic hockey stick that will be bundled with a new multi-player hockey video game for the Nintendo …

Takashi Iizuka, the producer of Sega’s upcoming Sonic Colours, has warned that there’s no way the game will be able to appease the hedgehog’s disparate fanbase. There are so many fans, each with their own unique first experience of the Sonic franchise, so I do understand that there are different …

Next Level Dundee set to welcome new media professionals in early September