Game industry business news

Sales of the Rock Band series have exceeded the $1 billion mark in North America, after only 15 months of being on sale. The figures come from MTV Games, citing figures from NPD Group. In addition, over 40 million tracks have been downloaded and purchased for the title. Viacom, which …

Publisher Activision Blizzard has confirmed that ‘Call of Duty’ has been dropped from the title of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2, suggesting that the series has now definitively been split in two. Since its move onto next-gen consoles, the Call of Duty brand has effectively been operating as two separate …

Sony has announced Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time for PlayStation 3. The game is set for release in the UK before the end of the year, and will conclude the story that began with 2007’s Tools of Destruction and continued last year with Quest for Booty, which was …

Metal Gear creator shares his thoughts on the East/West divide

The games industry continues to demonstrate its resilience to the tough global economic climate with news that North American based games retailer GameStop enjoyed its eighth straight year of growth in 2008. Full-year results for the fiscal year ending January 31st 2009 saw like-for-like sales climb 12.3 per cent for …

The hardware launch of the year is just a week away, and the UK games industry expects Nintendo’s DSi to give retail a huge boost. The handheld arrives in the UK on Friday, April 3rd, just as consumer spending ramps up ahead of the Easter weekend. Nintendo is hugely influential …

Bethesda’s next-gen action RPG Fallout 3 has claimed the coveted GDC 09 Game of the Year Award at this year’s event, though it was LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule that emerged as the ceremony’s main benefactor, scooping four accolades. Fallout 3 fended off the likes of Fable 2, Left 4 Dead, …

Japanese developer Q-Games has stated that its most recent PS3 release for Sony’s PS3, PixelJunk Eden, turned a profit within 24 hours of it being released onto Sony’s service. To read the full story, click here to head over to CasualGaming.biz.

New research from Japan’s Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association suggests that the number of people in Japan who consider themselves to be gamers has reduced significantly in the last year. The organisation polled over 1,000 individuals aged between three and 79. The number that claimed to be gamers had dropped by …

Head over to our RETAIL BIZ previews section to read our impressions of the biggest upcoming releases. This week, we take a look at Atari’s The Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena – as well as all the other major titles hitting retail on Friday. To check them out, …