Game industry business news

Grab your diary and pencil it in – the 2009 Develop Conference and Expo will take place from July 14th to 16th in Brighton. Back for its fourth year, the event will once again bring together the cream of the international development community for three days of learning, inspiration, networking …

With Microsoft having recently driven down the cost of its Xbox 360 SKU range, meaning that both the Arcade and Premium bundles are now cheaper than the Wii in the UK, the firm has stated that consumers should not expect further price movement for quite some time. Speaking to Videogamer, …

EA’s Spore might have been getting some love from US magazine Time , but fellow mag Fortune has seen fit to include the title in its list of ‘9 top tech flops’ for this Christmas. Other gaming companies mentioned include Microsoft and Sony, though not for their gaming output – …

Brighton-based development event returns from July 14th to 16th

High brow US cultural magazine TIME has named EA’s Spore as the 20th ‘Best Invention of 2008′. ‘The retail DNA test’ took top spot in the list, followed by ‘The Tesla Roadster’ and ‘The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’. Of Spore, the magazine said: ‘It’s blasphemy, brilliance or both to take the …

Though the stats have yet to be officially validated, online sales tracker VGChartz is reporting that Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV has thoroughly outsold Sony’s LittleBigPlanet in the pair’s first week of sale. GTA IV, which is published by Capcom in Japan, sold 104,000 copies in its first week – …

Those in attendance at today’s 26th annual Golden Joystick Awards are currently getting stuck into the after-show drinks, with the Activision-Blizzard crowd most rapturous as the publisher celebrates a triumphant afternoon in London. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare scooped no less than four awards in total, winning the Nuts …

Matthew Booty has been appointed by the Board of Directors at Midway as permanent President and CEO of the company. Booty has served as interim president and CEO of Midway Games since March this year. Booty joined Midway in 1991 as an engineer and programmer, in the year Midway launched …

EA has announced a brand new version of Criterion’s popular Burnout Paradise for both Xbox 360 and PS3 that is heading to the shelves in February next year. Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box will include both of the major bits of DLC received for the game so far – namely …

Proving that it’s sales popularity is anything but a passing success , Xbox 360 has outsold PS3 for the sixth week in succession in Japan this week, according to figures from Media Create. Microsoft’s machine sold 7,844 units for the week ending October 26th – nearly double the number of …