Game industry business news

The release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City on PS3 and PC has been delayed by two weeks from March 30th to April 16th. Rockstar said on its blog that a last minute change was made by Sony to edit in-game content, including the Liberty City radio station, …

GAME plans to seriously beef up its digital strategy in 2010, MCV understands. The High Street games retailer this week launched the GAME Moonbase on PlayStation Home – the first part of a new push to reach download-savvy consumers. The Moonbase is a virtual area that features mini-games, meeting places, …

Rental giant Blockbuster is looking to sell off its entire international business, including its 650-store UK operation. MCV understands that the retailer is in negotiations with landlords to reduce its store count to make it more appealing to potential buyers – placing some of its 5,000 UK employees at risk. …

Both use a main wand and an auxiliary joystick-equipped controller and both claim to track precise body movements, but Sega’s North American and European president and COO Mike Hayes has asked questions of the comparisons being drawn between PlayStation Move and Wii. Yes, I think that is unfair,” he told …

Valve believes the upcoming launch of Steam for Mac is "the biggest event in Steam’s history since the service was first launched". Speaking to Joystiq, John Cook, director of Steam development at Valve, said, "There are several people involved, from the UI team working on Mac support in the Steam …

An upcoming update for Xbox 360 will allow owners to use USB memory devices, documents obtained by Joystiq are said to claim. USB drives of up to 16GB (and a minimum of 1GB) will be supported, with users able to define how much of their USB device will be used …

We’ll likely never know whether Arc was never its name, was a temporary codename or was indeed dropped due a rumoured trademark dispute – but Sony has at least looked to explain its reasoning behind the name PlayStation ‘Move’. It’s great – everyone’s so interested in how our company names …

Warner Bros Interactive has revealed a new action RPG game set in the Lord of the Rings universe. The War in the North will focus on co-op gameplay set in Middle-Earth from the original J.R.R Tolkien novels. It promises new and familiar narratives, with up to three players able to …

Having seen spiralling costs bring about the supposed death of E3 – and the industry’s hunger for an annual US get together subsequently revive it – Sega has voiced concerns that the expense associated with the event may start to mount once again. E3 is something you have to do …

Global games retailer GameStop has posted like-for-like sales decreases of 7.9 per cent for both the financial quarter ending January 30th and fiscal 2009, though it still ranks as the retailer’s second best year ever. Sales of new software enjoyed a 1.2 per cent overall increase, and the chain pledged …