Game industry business news

Not long after Amazon shook up the games retail world by introducing Xbox Live Arcade download codes through its North American portal, the retailer has now started selling WiiWare games online. CasualGaming.biz has the full story – click here to have a read.

As part of its full year financial results posting earlier today, retailer GAME has dished out the numbers on UK lifetime sales of all today’s gaming platforms. It’s the DS that leads the pack, unsurprisingly, with total lifetime sales of 8.8m units. Next in line is its home console cousin …

French magazine Joypad has seemingly got the first word on Bizarre Creations’ top secret new racing IP – a combat-based arcade outing entitled Blur. Bizarre is the studio behind Microsoft’s successful Project Gotham Racing series, but having been acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2007 (and with the Gotham IP returning …

The games industry’s charity is hoping to raise both its profile and much-needed funds at this week’s MCV Awards in London. Up for grabs are a PlayStation 3 with SingStar Queen, a Nintendo DSi console, a Logitech Pure-Fi Dream speaker dock, a Logitech HD Powerline kit and 500Gb media server …

GAME has this morning finally, for the first time, started to publicly discuss the value of its pre-owned offer as part of its end-of-year results. Lisa Morgan, GAME CEO, today revealed that pre-owned games represent 18 per cent of turnover for the financial year – during which the firm reported …

GAME Group has posted encouraging gains in both turnover and profit during its preliminary results for the year ended 31 January 2009. Group turnover reached 1.97bn for the period, an impressive 32 per cent gain on the 1.49bn achieved in the same period last year. At the same time the …

Chip maker AMD saw losses widen in the first calendar quarter as the PC market went through a painful sales drought. A slump in demand for microprocessors saw quarterly sales sink by 21 per cent to reach $1.18bn, though this was still better than the previously projected result of $978 …

The recently-announced Pub Fund – a scheme where Sony matches development budgets of digital games in return for PlayStation exclusivity – should be a serious consideration for any independent developer. That was the sentiment offered by James Brooksby, Studio Head of Doublesix; the first developer to release a game – …

It has been known for a while that the upcoming duo of EA Grand Slam Sports Tennis and Tiger Woods 10 will support Nintendo’s gesture-enhancing Wii MotionPlus, but now the publisher has confirmed that both titles will include the device in the box. Both SKUs including the MotionPlus will retail …

Eidos is no longer a British publisher – after Japanese giant Square Enix completed its takeover of the Tomb Raider label this afternoon. The Board of Eidos announced today that acquisition had been sanctioned in a Court Hearing. The firm’s shares will be suspended on the London Stock Exchange at …