Publishing

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 …

The contentious copy-protection method that will require all Ubisoft PC titles to be constantly connected to the web is crucial for fighting piracy, the publisher says. The new ‘online platform’, as the publisher describes it, will be introduced with the release of Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 on …

Too right – the chain has sold games for as long as I remember, from before a heyday of Spectrum and C64 titles and onwards. It helped solidify games’ legitimacy on the High Street, and its buying decisions kept some of developers in the Britsoft Hall of Fame in business. …

Australian mobile game studio becomes publisherâ??s latest weapon, report claims

Echoing previous predictions by MCV, US games analyst Michael Pachter has predicted that Microsoft’s Natal will retail for between $50-$80 when it goes on sale worldwide this Christmas. MCV revealed last November that Microsoft is intending to sell Natal for under 50 in the UK, with some sources predicted that …

As Just Cause 2 nears completion with less than 10 staff tying the project up