Game industry business news

UK PC sales in the fourth quarter continued to grow at a rapid pace, despite a rising dollar, on-going recession and stalling shipments worldwide. According to figures released by IDC, more than 3.8 million PCs were sold during the fourth quarter, an increase of 13.3 per cent on the same …

Sony has decided not to renew the leases on the PlayStation Store and Sony Style outlets in San Francisco’s Metreon Shopping Center. The 350,000 square foot PlayStation store was originally opened in June 1999 and has hosted the West Coast launches for Sony’s flagship products, including the PS2, PSP and …

Tesco has opened its first Superstore branded outlet at the flagship retail development Liverpool One, with the supermarket going head-to-head with other city-centre non-food retailers like Currys.digital and Carphone Warehouse. The 28,600sq ft store opened today (Monday February 16th) and signals the retailer’s move away from only stocking a limited …

Ensemble Studios co-founder Tony Goodman and several colleagues have formed a new development house named Robot Entertainment. MCV’s sister site Develop has the full story right here.

Korean MMO specialist NCsoft has recorded a fall in both operating profit and net profit for its 2008 fiscal year, though its results for the final quarter of the year were all positive, leading to a strong outlook for 2009. Fiscal 2008 operating profit fell 15 per cent year-on-year to …

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has told MCV that the publisher has its sights set on claiming a greater chunk of the sports games market during 2009. The firm’s Shaun White Snowboarding title helped it generate over €500 million in the three months to December 31st – a 12 per cent …

Warner has thrown its weight behind Square Enix’s bid to buy UK publisher Eidos. The news comes following the announcement last week that Square had made an offer to buy the ailing Britsoft firm. Time Warner owns a 20 per cent stake in Eidos, and although it was often seen …

Aristen hopes its new FxStudio special effects suite will kick-start interest in an overlooked area of games technology, discovers Jon Jordanâ?¦

A slew of Wii and DS software will fail to make it to store shelves as retailers are forced to be more selective with the games they stock, MCV can reveal. The news follows a Christmas that featured an unprecedented amount of new software for all formats, with publishers moving …

Leading games industry figures have signed up to speak at next month’s Game Based Learning Conference. Capitalising on the success of the Handheld Learning Conference, Game Based Learning (GBL) will evaluate all aspects of games in education, and will feature speeches from Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Eidos co-founder Ian Livingstone …