Game industry business news

Steamworks offers sales stats, copy protection and other functions to PC game developers

Few will argue that Nintendo owned Christmas ’07, and its philosophy spread, with purpose, to the Porter household. A Wii Remote is the perfect cure for an apparently poorly constructed family. The large part consoles played in my Christmas helped remind me how important 2007 was for gamers. Fortunately, 2008 …

There’s plenty going on at GAME Group – on top of integrating its former rival Gamestation into its existing infrastructure, it continues to broaden its business by reaching out to new consumers and expanding in Europe. We get the full story from CEO Lisa Morgan and David Thomas, deputy CEO …

Analysts may well look back at 2007 as the tipping point when the games industry began to eat itself. So many developers were bought up that we could fill all 900-odd words of this feature listing them all; Vivendi bought Activision and in so doing squared up to a dominant …

Marvel Comics has cleared the way to set up its own video games publishing arm, after terminating its licensing deal with EA after only one game. Industry analysts have suggested to MCV that the US firm could be set to take its own slice of the publishing market, following years …

Nintendo has responded to worries that only first-party titles are selling on the Wii, stating that it believes the situation is only temporary. According to the company’s third-quarter report meeting transcription, translated by MCV sister site Develop, the problem is simply one of the Wii still being a young system …

Following a whopping multi-million dollar merger with GSPAC, newly-named SouthPeak Interactive Corporation has told MCV that it will step up its game portfolio and take on the big guns of the publishing world. The big-money merger with Global Services Partners Acquisition was revealed last week, a transaction which is made …

Woolworths has announced that Lloyd Wigglesworth has stepped down as managing director of EUK. Wigglesworth has led the distribution arm of Woolworths through a number of changes during his time at EUK, including the acquisitions of THE and Bertram, and will also retire from the Board. Steve Lewis, currently MD …

Activision’s Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has taken the top spot in the US’s PC chart for the week of January 13th – 19th, according to NPD data. Three World of Warcraft titles follow the FPS, with the original Blizzard MMO in second, the ‘Battle Chest’ compendium in third …

Specialist publishing powerhouse Future reported revenues of 40.6 million for the three months ending December 31st 2007 – down 1.5 per cent compared to the same period in 2006. Future attributed the drop to ‘project phasing of customer publishing revenues’ which despite being down in the first quarter are expected …