Game industry business news

Epic's engine licensed by Take Two internal developers

The first fruits of Electronic Arts’ collaboration with Hasbro have been unveiled, with games based on Littlest Pet Shop, Nerf, Yahtezee, Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk, Operation, Trivial Pursuit, Pictureka due throughout the year. EA’s Casual Entertainment label has said it is targetting games for console, mobile and PC – with a …

Devil May Cry has made it to the top spot of the ChartTrack All Formats Top 40, something it hasn’t done in the franchises’ history. The ex-PlayStation exclusive has managed it with a little help from the Xbox 360, which accounted for 61 per cent of the game’s sales. Mario …

Empire Interactive is to resurrect the popular puzzle title, Pipe Mania on a broad variety of platforms. The original Pipe Mania was initially published in 1989, and achieved sales of over four million units worldwide. It appeared on a multitude of formats, including Amiga, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, Acorn Electron, …

Marvel Entertainment has agreed to end development of an MMO title it has been working on with Microsoft – reigniting rumours that the comic giant is making a unilateral move into video games. The company ended a similar deal with EA last month, which encouraged industry analysts to tell MCV …

A prominent opinion piece in today’s Daily Telegraph has slammed Gordon Brown for employing Dr. Tanya Byron to carry out her investigation into the availability of violent video games. Telegraph writer Jim White largely defends the industry in his editorial – albeit with some questionable assumptions (‘[games] are overwhelmingly the …

In a further blow to Toshiba’s beleaguered HD-DVD hi-def disc format, giant US DVD rental service Netflix has announced that it to phase out the format this year in favour of Sony’s Blu-Ray format. Tech blog Engadget says the mail rental service cites the dissipating studio support of HD-DVD as …

Current industry darling Nintendo has had a storming year, with Wii overtaking 360’s UK installed base and DS hitting five million sales on these shores and 65 million worldwide. Speaking exclusively to MCV, Yarnton reveals Nintendo’s plans for the year ahead and insists that the platform holder is doing all …

Take 2’s 2K Play label has signed up to handle the global release of pre-school products from Viacom’s Nickelodeon division. The three-year deal is an extension of a current agreement between the two firms, and will see DS, PS2 and Wii titles released across the Northern America, Asia and Europe. …

Ubisoft Montreal has said that the PS3’s unique architecture has proved a good fit for the technology behind its upcoming Far Cry 2 – though says that it has taken a lot of effort to get used to the machine. "We were somewhat worried by some of the reported high …