Game industry business news

Despite its controversial decision to ditch UMD functionality with the recently released PSPgo, Sony has claimed that the device has sold more than it had expected at this early stage in its lifecycle. We are over-forecast on what we thought we’d be selling on PSP Go, so we’ve been very …

Ahead of the year that will see all three platform holders take to the motion-control battleground, Sony America’s head of PlayStation marketing John Koller has boldly predicted that neither Nintendo’s existing Wii or Microsoft’s upcoming Natal will be able to match Sony’s ambitions in the merging tech space. Quite honestly, …

Sony’s recently released range of downloadable bite-sized games Minis are now available to play on both PSP and PS3 thanks to the release of a new firmware update for the home console. Any Minis title purchased from this point on will be playable on both machines. Those who have already …

Numbers from Enterbrain, the publisher of weekly games magazine Famitsu, show that Sony’s PS3 has now sold over 4m units in Japan. The same stats show that Nintendo’s Wii has now also passed the 9m total sales mark since its release in 2006. The PS3’s performance is all the more …

Square Enix is positioning Final Fantasy XIV as a serious rival to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft series, company president Yoichi Wada has revealed. In an interview with Develop, Wada disclosed the full extent of Square Enix’s ambitions for the upcoming Final Fantasy MMO, and indicated that Blizzard’s need to – …

With the clock ticking on the rapid approach to Christmas retailers are stepping up their efforts to capture as much consumer spend as they can before the festive spend dries up – and Xbox 360 hardware is the latest to get the discount treatment. Both GAME and HMV are currently …

The president of Square Enix – the increasingly Western-facing Japan-headquartered publishing empire – has refuted the widely held view that the Japanese game industry is in decline. Yoichi Wada is thought to be the first high-profile industry executive that’s publicly spoken in defence of the Japanese industry. If you look …

Digital Sky Technologies adds to its previous $200m injection

A Russian investment firm that previously invested $200m in social network leader Facebook has backed Mafia Wars and FarmVille developer Zynga to the power of $180m. The move means that Zynga now has an approximate valuation of between $1.5bn-$3bn. The fulls tory is on CasualGaming.biz.

Publisher EA and Swedish developer DICE have announced that over 3m players have no signed up to the online free-to-play Battlefield Heroes. Battlefield Heroes continues to grow fast with well over 50,000 new players joining us every week,” Battelfield Heroes’ general manager Ben Cousins stated. The full story is over …