Game industry business news

GAME Group’s sales have fallen 10.8 per cent for the 44 weeks to December 5th – despite strong sales of FIFA and Modern Warfare 2. Like-for-like sales were for the same period were down 15.1 per cent, while total UK sales were down 14.3 per cent. Meanwhile, for the 18 …

An Israel-based company that directly provides streaming games to set top boxes has claimed its service will offer publishers long-term revenue opportunities when it launches next year. PlayCast allows modern video games to be played live via on-demand TV providers such as BT and Virgin Media, without the need for …

Konami has begun the process of vetting the Pro Evolution Soccer fanbase about what they consider Konami should be concentrating on as it gets to work on next year’s PES 2011. The questions touch on subjects such as graphics, gameplay, licenses and editing – and fanboys should take note of …

A hero of British publishing and development for the past four decades, Ian Livingstone finds himself at the centre of Square Enix’s ‘new’ Eidos. Tim Ingham catches up with Lara Croft’s right-hand man…Can you give us a general impression of how the Square UK ‘merger’ has gone – and how …

Things might not be going quite as smoothly for the Pro Evolution Soccer series in Europe as publisher Konami would have hoped, but the series is showing no signs of lagging in its homeland of Japan. Kotaku reports that PES 2010 was the best selling game throughout November in Japan, …

Just this morning MCV reported that New Super Mario Bros Wii had shifted an impressive 422k units in Nintendo’s homeland of Japan in its first 24 hours on the shelves – and now the game has gone on to smash Wii’s week one sales record in the territory. Famitsu reports …

The news is not surprising, but EA has for the first time officially confirmed what we all suspected – Dead Space 2 is in development for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Much like its predecessor, Dead Space 2 is being developed by Visceral Games. It will once again star protagonist …

Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada has (not for the first time) levelled some harsh criticism at the Japanese games market, stating that Japanese gamers still harbour an unfair bias against Western-developed titles. Wada was speaking in a YouTube interview, spotted by Kotaku, about the Japanese word ‘youge’. Directly translated it …

It already boasts a popular and competitive MP3 marketplace and now leading national supermarket Tesco has taken a huge stride into the digital video space with the announcement of its new Virtual DVD offering. Using Microsoft’s Silverlight – an ambitious rival to Adobe’s Flash technology – the products will offer …

Globally recognised pro skateboarder Tony Hawk has spoken in defence of Activision’s Tony Hawk: Ride, accusing many critics of failing to give the game the credit he feels it deserves. Most snarky critics had their minds set before ever seeing/playing the game,” Hawk said on his Twitter profile. I’m proud …