Publishing

RedOctane founders Kai and Charles Huang will not leave their owner Activision, the publisher has told Develop, despite the Guitar Hero group effectively closing its operations this month. The full story is over on Develop.

A solution is on the way for the ongoing piracy challenge that Sony believes is the platform’s biggest problem” – that’s the claim of SCEA’s senior VP of publisher relations Rob Dyer. The biggest problem that plagued PSP was piracy – we have not been able to slow that down,” …

Square Enix-owned group still holds significant interest in the studio

Having spent the day getting to grips with Microsoft’s Project Natal yesterday, comments from outspoken TV presenter Jonathan Ross point to a possible October release date for the anticipated Xbox 360 peripheral. The news is roughly in line with news obtained by MCV last year suggesting that Microsoft is preparing …

Batman: Arkham Asylum developer bought by the DC Comics owner

Growing video games publisher Warner Bros Interactive has acquired a majority stake in London-based developer Rocksteady Studios. The move comes after the tremendous success enjoyed by Rocksteady’s 2009 release Batman: Arkham Asylum. The deal is the latest in Warner’s ongoing strategy to strengthen its internal development capacity. In 2007 it …

Mind-boggling” – that’s the word Activision boss Bobby Kotick used to describe how he felt about the $7m acquisition of Blizzards by Davidson & Associates in 1994. The exec couldn’t believe the ludicrous amount of money Blizzard had been sold for” at the time. Eight years down the line Kotick …

The amount of money invested in the video games sector by venture capitalists in North America was down 29 per cent in 2010 according to a new data from PricewaterhouseCoopers. Boston.com reports that in 2008 money from venture capitalists funded the development of 35 games in North America, representing a …

2K Games has announced it will be supporting BioShock 2 with an aggressive line-up of post-launch downloadable content. The first DLC pack – Sinclair Solutions Test Pack – will hit Xbox Live and PSN in March, and adds new characters, weapons upgrades and maps to the multiplayer mode, as well …

Video games have been blamed for turning children into sex objects”, a leading psychologist has claimed. TV’s Dr Linda Papadopoulos criticised games with sexual content and web browser fashion game Miss Bimbo, where girls compete to accumulate boob jobs in order to marry a billionaire”. The London Metropolitan University’s clinical …