Publishing

Ever-increasing development budgets rear ugly head in latest Square Enix financials

After the disastrous collapse of 2009, global advertising revenue is again on the rise. That’s according to Worldwatch Institute’s Vital Signs Online service, which found that the 9.6 per cent drop suffer in 2009 in the aftermath of the global banking meltdown has been partially reversed thanks to a 3.3 …

Japanese telco SoftBank has announced its attention to significantly increase its stake in mobile gaming site GungHo. The company plans to spend 25bn ($265m) on over 73,000 shares, taking its overall share ownership from 33.6 per cent to 58.5 per cent. It will acquire the shares from Asian Groove, a …

Telecomms giant increases stake in company by 20 per cent to 58.5 per cent

Square Enix’s big console releases are not performing as desired in the West. As part of the publisher’s latest financial report, the company described sales of Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs as weak” in both North America and Europe. Specifically, Tomb Raider has shifted 3.4m copies in three …

SimCity has made its way back onto the Indian Origin store a couple of weeks after it was pulled by EA. SiimCity was released on Origin for Indian users at launch. Then a bunch of non-Indians found a loophole that let them circumvent Origin’s region restrictions to get the game …

Hyperkin’s RetroN 4 console reveal earlier this month turned out to be only part of the story. The company today unveiled the RetronN 5, which adds an additional cartridge slot for Japanese Famicom games. That’s in addition to the previously confirmed slots for NES, SNES, GBA, and Sega Genesis cartridges. …

A leaked image of a promotional Battlefield 4 poster has revealed that the game is set for release in fall 2013”. Fall would probably mean the October-November period, which is in line with Battlefield 3 (28th October) and arch rival Call of Duty, which usually releases in mid-November. The poster …

2K Games’ BioShock Infinite, which goes sale worldwide tonight, is receiving a blistering reception from critics. The review embargo lifted just one hour ago at the time of writing, and already the game has an almighty 96 per cent rating on Metacritic. Only 13 other games have ever scored so …

Sony has revealed that around a third of the games it sells on Vita are digital. Is that impressive? That’s a matter of opinion. Certainly it doesn’t sound anything special when the thousands of games that are downloaded everyday on iOS and Android are considered. But from a company transitioning …